


step into the sun

by blvkebellamy



Series: waving through a window [1]
Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: ALSO!!! it doesnt exactly followed the plot of tangled, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Historical, Basically a tangled AU, Bellarke Big Bang 2019, Clurphy brotp, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Humor, Light Angst, One Shot, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Tangled AU, Thief!Bellamy, and fuckin RAN, but its like blink and youll miss it, but like it was a total accident im so sorry, but we love him, i just..... grabbed what i liked, murphy is a little bitch, rapunzel!clarke, there is weed, theres a little bit of sexual harassment, these bitches are hella oblivious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-07-07 22:30:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19859059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blvkebellamy/pseuds/blvkebellamy
Summary: "“This is useless,” Murphy reasons. “We can’t get up there and I don’t feel like yell—whoa, what the fuck is that?”Yellow rope cascades down, long enough to span the height of the tower. It’s loose, not tightly coiled like regular rope would be. The fibres sway in the breeze, shiny and smooth.Wait a second. That’s…“That’s hair,” Bellamy says, the words feeling too big for his mouth."Or: Bellamy's a thief, Murphy's an asshole, and Clarke's in a tower.How can this go wrong?(a.k.a. The not really Tangled AU)





	step into the sun

**Author's Note:**

> HI! so I wrote 30 thousand words. no biggie.
> 
> this is an AU that's been on my mind for so fuckin long u dont even KNOW. also like theres a sorta body snatching element to this and id just like to say that that was thought up of before season 6..... so im basically psychic.
> 
> a couple of thank yous because i have too much love in my tiny heart:
> 
> \- rachel aka buckthebarnes on tumblr: she has helped me so much u dont even know. she basically BIRTHED this fic with me. if this fic was a baby she was the midwife pulling it out of me. is that how pregnancy works? doesnt matter
> 
> \- the blarkecord (specifically sydney, shae, robin [even if ive only known her for like 3 days], megan, marie, luna, ali, sam, lully, kat and sara): those bitches pushed me through when i felt like i had nothing left. i love all of u.
> 
> \- my brother and sister. they helped edit this fic and gave me validation when i felt like quitting. i love them so much.
> 
> \- essie!!!! aka pawprinterfanfic on tumblr: she made!!! beautiful moodboards!!!! im so blessed.
> 
> so yeah. those are my thank yous. if ur still reading this say peanuts and send me a prompt on tumblr @blvke-bellamy.

Abby Griffin loved her family.

She loved her husband, Jake, and her pudgy daughter Clarke. She loved how they would talk about subjects so trivial to her for hours on end. She loved how they would drive her up the wall when she needed to concentrate. She loved how they tried to surprise her with gifts even when she saw them coming from a mile away. She loved their smiles and their laughs, lighting up any room better than her magic ever could. 

So when Jake, the husband she loved so much, started to fade, she knew she had to do something to save him.

Abby Griffin loved her family, and she would do anything for them.

On a cold night with the moon looming over and watching, Abby Griffin set out into the forest. An orb of light to guide her glowed from her fingertips. She trudged over fallen tree roots, ignoring the sense of  _ wrong  _ that threatened to suffocate her at every turn. She pushed forward, going against all the lessons she learned as a girl, all the warnings to  _ stay away. _

Soon, she saw it. Her light was snuffed out by a blanket of stifling energy as she broke through the vines. A clearing. In the centre of the clearing, a tower, high and mighty. Untouchable.

Abby Griffin called out for Agnes, the witch with a silvertongue and a black heart. The wind picked up around her, and Abby Griffin had to fight not to move, to not bolt until the steady thrum of  _ get out it’s wrong need to leave need to leave  _ stopped. She grasped the shawl around her, remembering her words.

She was desperate. So desperate, but the witch couldn’t know.

Abby Griffin felt the moment the witch materialised. The air turned cold and stale, an acrid smell clinging and clawing at Abby Griffin’s lungs.

“Well, well, well,” Agnes said, her voice sharp and piercing, “what do we have here?”

Abby Griffin straightened up, squaring her shoulders and looking into the eyes of the witch. They were pitch black and soulless, almost sucking in the light around them.

“I come to make a bargain,” Abby Griffin said in a calm, steady voice. Flat and emotionless, betraying nothing.

“And why would you do that? You have everything you want. A daughter, a husband,” the witch stopped for a beat, head tilting as she considered, “or has he left already?”

Abby Griffin swallows harshly. “His heart still beats.”

“Ah, but his mind has stopped.”

Abby Griffin stilled at this. She knew the witch was powerful, but how could she have known? She was careful. So careful.

Agnes stalks forward, jerky and unnatural. “The bargain?”

“Save his life, return him back to what he once was.”

The witch nodded.“And what do I get in return?”

“I thought we could discuss that now.”

The witch hummed—a grating, hollow noise. “Whatever I can carry,” she rasped, head stilling as her eyes found Abby Griffin’s.

“That’s it? That’s all you ask?”

“That’s all I need.”

Abby Griffin paused to think. She had nothing she truly couldn’t live without—nothing worth more than her husband and her daughter. If it was something she needed she could always get more. This was almost too good to be true, but what other choice did she have?

Abby Griffin looked back up to see the witch staring intently at her face, watching her muscles twitch as she considered. When Abby Griffin’s face turned resolute, the witch smiled, thin skin stretching over almost too many teeth.

Agnes’ hand extends shakily, calloused palms almost shining in the moonlight.

“Do we have a deal?”

Abby Griffin stared down at the hand. Taking a deep breath, she clasped it firmly, shaking it once and watching the faint blue glow of magic seal the bargain. It crawled up her arm lazily, leaving a cool trail in its wake before dissipating into the night.

“Deal.”

Abby Griffin loved her family. 

With one word, she destroyed it.

***

Clarke watched with wide eyes as the old woman stepped into their house, cold air trailing in her wake. Her mother ushered her into the bedroom where she knew her father’s sickly figure lay. 

She peered in the door and watched as the old woman shed her barely-there coat, revealing a hunched figure and thin, papery skin. The old woman’s head whipped back to see Clarke, who refused to flinch. She stood her ground, chin jutting out as she met this woman’s stare with one of her own. The woman smiled, a grim, grotesque baring of teeth.

Although she refused to flinch, she couldn’t stop the shiver running down her spine. 

The woman turned back to her father, her gnarled hands moving in a series of complicated patterns. Clarke stared intently, wanting to memorise it for herself. Maybe then she could help her father. Maybe then her mother wouldn’t look so tired.

Clarke watched the woman until her eyes burned and watered, refusing to blink even for a second. Abruptly, the woman stopped, and her father took a long, shuddering breath. Her mother let out a sob of relief, pressing her face to the sheets of the bed.

“My payment?” The woman said, head-turning eerily slowly until she looked at Clarke.

Her mother noticed her stare, and rose to put herself between them. Still, the woman’s eyes found her, staring with dark intent.

“Anything you can carry,” her mother said, taking a step back towards Clarke, “that’s what we agreed upon.”

The woman pried her eyes away from Clarke away long enough to give her mother a crooked smile.

“And that’s what I will take.”

In the blink of an eye, the woman forced her mother aside, barrelling towards Clarke. She tried to scream but found her muscles no longer answered to her, now bending to an outside force. Her breaths were even and steady, but her eyes betrayed her fear.

The woman— _ witch _ —picked Clarke up, hoisting her over her frail shoulders, running out of the house and into the shelter of the night.

Clarke watched with wide eyes as her mother screamed after her, wondering what she did to get taken away.

***

Bellamy Blake watches from a tree as Murphy jumps on a carriage with practised ease. He quickly knocks out the driver with a swift kick and eases the horses into a slow trot until they eventually stop. 

Not as smoothly as he would have done it, but he’ll let Murphy have this one.

The passenger in the carriage pokes his head out. He’s red faced and his expression is contorted into an ugly sneer. “Why are we stopping?” He practically spits out. “I’ll dock your pay if—” The man blanches as he catches sight of Murphy, now resting his chin on his hands, smiling leisurely. He waggles his fingers at the man like a schoolgirl caught looking at someone she fancied.

“Hiya,” Murphy grins.

The man scrambles to get back into the carriage, the whole thing rocking back and forth in his haste. Murphy rolls his eyes— _ such a drama queen— _ and effortlessly climbs in through the window, pulling out twin daggers as he goes in.

With his view of Murphy obscured, Bellamy hops down from his vantage point and strolls over, hands in his pockets. To the untrained eye, Bellamy’s gait looked easy and smooth. Underneath that, however, his hand was gripping his own knife, ready to use in case something went awry. Or in case he needed to show off; it never hurt to look good.

“Back the fuck off, Blake. This one’s mine,” Murphy snaps, throwing the man out of the carriage, grinning in satisfaction as he lands with a rough  _ thump. _

The old man stumbles out and tries to run, ploughing right into Bellamy. “Please, sir, call for help!” He says, clutching at Bellamy’s pants, sweaty hands leaving marks.  _ And I just washed these,  _ Bellamy thought. He raises his eyebrows at Murphy, eyes pointedly looking down at the man, then back at him.

Murphy glares back, dragging the man up and off Bellamy. “Oh, shut up.” He tosses the man back into the dirt, taking the bulging coin purse from his belt as he falls with nimble fingers. He opens the purse, idly counting the coins as he eyes the man, assessing him for other things he can take.

“I need to talk to you,” Bellamy says, watching as Murphy prods the man into giving him his clothes.

“Can’t you—yes the socks too. I said everything, didn’t I?—can’t you see I’m busy?” Once the man was stark naked, clad in only a loincloth, Murphy let him crawl back to his carriage. 

“Listen, it’s not like I want to do this—” 

“Then don’t. It’s not my problem.” Murphy slaps the flanks of the horses, sending them trotting down the trail. Bellamy had forgotten how difficult Murphy was. He’s spent a lot of time blocking it all out—it was the only way he could keep sane after meeting him.

“Octavia’s gone,” Bellamy blurts out, grabbing Murphy’s arm before he can disappear into the trees. Murphy stares at his hand, face pulling into such an offended expression that it would have been comical if Bellamy wasn’t so desperate. “She’s gone, and I can’t find her.”

Murphy shakes Bellamy’s grip off, regarding him with a cool and calculating stare. “What do you want me to do about it?”

“I need… I need you to help me find her. You’re…” Bellamy squeezes his eyes shut, obvious discomfort on his face. He breathes deeply, trying to not retch on the spot. He wishes the earth would swallow him whole. That would hurt less than admitting this.  _ My sister, my responsibility,  _ Bellamy reminds himself.

“I’m..?”

“You’re a better tracker than I am,” Bellamy says, the words rushing out like they taste sour on his tongue. His entire body involuntarily shudders, as if it was revolting against the fact that Bellamy just said Murphy was better than him. Bellamy would revolt too if this wasn’t his last option. He’s pretty sure he’s going to have a fever from this, just to flush out all the toxins.

Murphy ignores his mini freakout and instead gets right to the chase.

“What’ll I get in return?”

“You get first pick on carriages around here for a month.”

“Make it three months.”

Bellamy glares at Murphy, at his cocky grin. He knew he had the upper hand. 

Bastard.

“Fine.”

***

“This way.”

“Murphy, we’ve been going this way for weeks! There’s nothing here except trees and—and disappointment,” Bellamy says, kicking a rock to punctuate his sentence.

“Who’s the better tracker here? Oh, that’s right, me. And who said that, again?”

“Murphy, I swear to god—”

“Why I believe it was you, was it not?”

“Murphy I will cut out your fucking tongue don’t test—” Murphy holds up a hand for silence and Bellamy grudgingly clicks his mouth shut, almost biting down on his tongue. He was right. He  _ really  _ regrets this.

Murphy’s eyes dart around until they settled on a bird. “Chip chip chirrup,” Murphy says, deadpan. The silence drags on, until the birds tweet of their own volition. Bellamy refuses to say they were tweeting back; the stretch of silence is different each time. He should know, he’s counted. “The birds say there’s help this way.” 

“The birds can kiss my ass,” Bellamy bites back.

“Chip cheep.” Silence. Then a smattering of chirps back. “The birds say fuck you.”

“You’re not even talking to them! You’re just chirping badly,” Bellamy sputters, close to pulling out his hair.

“Well, you’re not chirping at all, so by default, I’m better than you,” Murphy says, turning abruptly and walking in a random direction.

“Where are you going?”

“To take a rest. Lean back a little, Blake, your forehead vein is practically screaming at me.”

That was it. That’s the last straw. If his forehead vein was screaming it had every right to, especially when a cocksure idiot was aggravating it. “Lean back? My  _ sister  _ is god knows where and you want me to  _ lean back?” _ Bellamy shouts, stomping over to Murphy. He was so  _ mad.  _ He had been jumping through hoops for him all  _ week  _ and they had nothing. Without even thinking, Bellamy’s hands reach out to push Murphy into the boulder behind him. Just before they connect, Murphy side steps away, leaving Bellamy to crash into the boulder face first.

At least, he  _ should _ have crashed into it face first. His body went straight through, a cold, prickling feeling making its way up his back. He lost his footing and crashed into the ground face first instead.

“Huh. I could have  _ sworn  _ I told you that boulder was fake.”

Bellamy took a deep, calming breath.  _ For Octavia,  _ he repeats in his mind, a steady mantra keeping him going. Killing Murphy would take too much time anyway. A barrage of insults races through his mind, but he decides to be civil. “You didn’t,” he grinds out, gritting his teeth. He was mature. A mature person didn’t resort to petty insults. If Murphy woke up with lizards in his sleeping roll later, Bellamy—the mature one—would just turn the other way. 

“Oops,” Murphy says, not an ounce of regret in his voice, “must’ve slipped my mind.” He smiles serenely at Bellamy, stepping over him and into a clearing.

Mature. He was mature.

The clearing was empty, from what Bellamy could see. Although judging by how his day was going, it could be filled with a shit ton of pegasi. Or a dragon-sized Murphy. Honestly, there could be anything. The possibilities were endless. Murphy is acting weird, walking in a circle only he could see. Then again, Murphy was always weird, so it wasn’t much of a stretch. 

Bellamy got up and starts to trudge over to Murphy, silently fuming. Murphy was great at tracking, granted, but he was also great at being an asshole.  _ Is it worth it?  _ Bellamy thought,  _ Does my sanity really mean so little? _

“Hey, Blake!” Murphy calls out, stopping Bellamy in his tracks. “Walk around like I did, unless you wanna eat stone.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Murphy?”

“The tower? You know, the one right in front of you?”

Bellamy stops. On one hand, Murphy had been able to detect that freaky boulder. On the other hand, he didn’t tell him about them before, so why would he start now? “There’s nothing here, nothing except—OW, shit, why the  _ fuck _ does this keep happening to me?”

A tower. There was a fucking twenty metre tall tower that he somehow missed.  _ What the actual fuck. _

Waves emanate from the point of impact like ripples in a pond, steadily revealing it inch by inch. Soon, it was right in front of him. Built of stone, ivy vines crawled their way up, twining all around it. From what Bellamy could see. There weren’t any doors. Just a lone window at the very top.

Bellamy takes one look at Murphy and throws a rock at him. “Shut it.”

“I wasn’t gonna say anything.”

“Yes, you were.”

“Yeah, I was.”

Getting back to his feet, Bellamy turns back to Murphy. “This is great and all, but how the hell is this gonna help me find my sister?”

“Uh, hello?” A voice says, barely audible. It was high and warm, and as Bellamy looks up, he sees a face peering back down at him. Or, at least a vague blob that looked like it could be a face.

“Is that—”

“Can you hear me?” The voice says, and now Bellamy could see a hand frantically waving.

“We can hear you!” Bellamy shouts back. “What are you doing up there?”

“What?”

“I said,” Bellamy yells, using all his effort to try to project his voice as far as he could, “What! Are! You! Doing! Up! There!” 

“Wait, I can’t hear you!”

His efforts are wasted.

“Is there a way—”

“Hold on, there’s no way up!” The voice interrupts. Murphy runs a hand down his face, head practically parallel to the floor as he looks up.

“This is useless,” Murphy reasons. “We can’t get up there and I don’t feel like yell—whoa, what the fuck is that?”

Yellow rope cascades down, long enough to span the height of the tower. It’s loose, not tightly coiled like regular rope would be. The fibres sway in the breeze, shiny and smooth. 

_ Wait a second. That’s… _

“That’s hair,” Bellamy says, the words feeling too big for his mouth. 

“No shit,” Murphy says back, the retort losing its bite since he’s clearly distracted by the hair as well.

“Are you gonna climb or what?” The voice says, an impatient tone curling around the words.

“Do we just…” Bellamy gestures helplessly, still freaked the fuck out because  _ it’s fucking hair. _

“Don’t overthink it, man,” Murphy says, wise as always. God, he’s an ass. Bellamy grips the hair, finds it surprisingly strong, and starts to make his way up. He takes a deep breath, trying not to think about whether this hurts the voice or not.

Bellamy likes to climb. He’s good at it, and being high up didn’t really faze him. What  _ did  _ faze him was the fact that he was climbing a tower that literally  _ rippled  _ into existence and he’s using hair as a rope. He wasn’t going to be bested by Murphy, however, so he tries to ignore the circumstances and just climbs.

Murphy reaches the top first, swinging his legs into the window. Bellamy follows shortly after, surprisingly stable but sweaty. Not one to be one-upped by Murphy, he opts to lean against the wall nonchalantly, although the effect is ruined when he stumbles on a trapdoor, staggering forward. 

Trying to ignore his burning ears, he runs a hand through his hair, taking in the room around him. There’s a chair, a closet, and a table with plants on it. Nothing else. Well, there  _ is  _ an abundance of hair covering every surface, but Bellamy feels like that’s a given.

The hair really  _ is  _ everywhere. All along the bannisters, on basically every part of the floor and somehow already on his shoe. His eyes follows the path of hair and lands on a girl about his age—maybe younger. Closer to Octavia’s. The blonde hair was attached to her head and she was wringing her hands nervously, looking everywhere but at him.  _ Oh. She’s pretty,  _ Bellamy thinks. He quickly pushes that thought out of his mind. He needs to concentrate on Octavia, and no one with that much hair could have a stable mind. She’s wearing a plain blue dress that Bellamy can’t help but notice brings out the blue in her eyes.

God, he is such a sap.

“Hey,” Bellamy says, trying to act as if scaling secret towers was an everyday occurrence. Her eyes snap to his and she hesitantly gives him a smile. He nods in return as she steps back a bit and takes a deep breath.

“Hello. My name is Clarke Griffin,” she says, stiff, as if she’s been practicing and waiting for two idiots to fall into her window so she could introduce herself.

“‘Sup. I’m Murphy and this is my charity case, Bellamy,” Murphy says, looking up from where he was inspecting her plant table.

“I’m not your charity case. I offered you a deal.”

“Which I took out of the kindness of my heart.”

“Fuck off, Murphy.”

“Fuck?” Clarke interjects, face screwing up in confusion. Murphy slowly stops tormenting Bellamy, turning around only when her tone registers in his mind. 

“Yeah. Fuck.” Murphy enunciates the last word slowly, eyes growing wide when he sees Clarke’s confusion morph into a pensive look.

“What does fuck mean?”

“Holy shit,” Murphy whispers to himself, repeating it and hitting Bellamy on the arm as if he was swatting a pest. He looks at Bellamy, his eyes screaming  _ oh my god are you seeing this?  _

Bellamy tries to convey through a series of eyebrow movements and shoving away his hands that yes, he indeed sees it because he’s  _ right fucking there. _

“You’re looking for your sister, right?” Clarke asks, seemingly unaware or just choosing to ignore Murphy’s breakdown. It’s a good call since he seems close to foaming at the mouth, hands moving to hit Bellamy as many times as possible. Bellamy hopes he doesn’t have to resuscitate him; they’re nowhere near that level of friendship.

“Yeah, Octavia. Have you seen her? Or—I guess not since you’re in this tower. Wait, do you ever leave this tower?” Bellamy says, still swatting away hands. 

“Um, not since I came here.”

“Which was?”

“Uh, about ten years ago.”

Bellamy feels his eyebrows shoot up into his hairline.  _ Ten years? Ten years in one room? _

Clarke looks as if she is waiting for him to call her out on that fact, almost daring him to. There’s a spark in her eye, bright and challenging. Bellamy is tempted to argue with her, just to see what would happen. Judging by the look she was giving him, he would be lucky if he made it out with his dignity intact. He figures he’d open that can of worms later, preferably when he wasn’t getting slapped within an inch of his life.

Bellamy settles on nodding as if he understands what it’s like to live in a tower cut off from the world with only a handful of books for entertainment.

He went to school for a year. It seems pretty similar.

Clarke seems pleased with his reaction, smiling as if they were in on a secret together. “I can help you find your sister.”

“You—Murphy stop hitting me, I swear to god. Go—go stand in that corner.” Murphy takes a second before he walks off, head held high as if this was his idea. Bellamy turns back to Clarke, offering her a smile in apology. “You can help me find Octavia? How?” 

She looks at her books, then back at him. “Get me out first. Then I’ll tell you.”

At least she knows what she wants. “Do you need help with climbing down?”

She holds up her wrist, revealing a small cuff on it, leather, about two fingers wide. “It’s warded. If I jump out, this thing kills me. It also mutes my magic, so I can’t get it off myself. I need someone else with magic to do it for me.”

Murphy steps to Clarke, seemingly past his mini freak out. He reaches forward, tugging sharply until the cuff comes off. He winces and drops it like it burned him, although his fingers remained unmarked. Clarke, on the other hand, is a different story. Scorch marks in a pattern of sigils line her skin, already a dark brown.  _ How long have those been there?  _ Bellamy wonders. She rubs them absentmindedly, head tilting curiously.

“You have magic?” She says, looking Murphy up and down.

“I have enough.” Clarke purses her lips but nods in understanding, turning to start gathering things in a satchel. 

“Why are you here?” Murphy asks, hand gesturing to the room.

“My mom traded me so my dad could live. Now I’m here.”

“Fucked up parents,” Murphy says approvingly, “nice.” He holds his hand out for a high-five, which Clarke just stares at. Her hand hesitantly comes up, and she lightly takes his fingers, shaking once. Her face screws up as she does this, knowing it wasn’t right but not knowing  _ why  _ it was so weird.

“We’ll work on that,” Murphy says to himself, pulling out a notebook that Bellamy has never seen before. He didn’t even know Murphy could read. Craning his head, Bellamy sees that he has written _Things to Teach the Tower Kid._ Underneath a bolded ‘SWEARING’, he writes down, ‘my secret handshake’.

“Who keeps you here?” Bellamy asks, hoping it wasn’t a sore subject. They had just met. She didn’t need to know his true asshole self. That was reserved for rich men and Murphy.

“I don’t know her name, just that she’s a witch. And that she’s powerful. You’re actually lucky that she isn’t here right now. You’d probably be dead.”

Bellamy and Murphy exchange a slightly fearful look, the feeling of self-preservation settling into their bones.

“Do you know when she’s coming back?” Bellamy asks, shouldering his bag more securely.

“Uh, no. To be honest, it could be at any minute.”

They let this sentence hang in the air for a moment. Bellamy waits for Clarke to move with more urgency, but she just carries on, unbothered, as if a witch wasn’t going to kill them on sight.

“Do… you think we should leave?” Murphy says.

“Oh, yeah, definitely.” Clarke stands back up from where she was rifling, practically vibrating with nervous energy. “I still might die, you know?”

“Then maybe we shouldn’t leave until we’re sure,” Bellamy suggests. He needs to find Octavia but that doesn’t mean that he’d sacrifice an innocent girl to do it. He’s a thief, not a monster.

“Well you might die here anyway,” Murphy says, “might as well die in style.”

Bellamy shoots Murphy a glare, about to tell him to stop being such a dick when Clarke laughs, her whole body lighting up. She laughs like she was afraid someone would come and force her to stop, her hand covering her mouth and curled in on herself. Bellamy wonders what she would look like if she laughed without it.

After her giggles died down, Clarke hooks her hair up to a pulley, allowing the weight to be held there instead of at her head. Bellamy and Murphy go down first, sliding down. It’s not any less weird, considering the fact that it’s  _ still hair _ .

_ At least it’s not greasy,  _ Bellamy thinks. Thank god for the little things.

He lands with a hard  _ thump  _ on the ground, tilting his neck back up to watch Clarke. She’s sitting off the ledge of the window, her feet dangling in the air. Bellamy is afraid she won’t come down, leaving him back to square one. After weeks of searching, that can’t happen. He needs her.

There was also the fact that there was an evil witch, but that seemed less important.

“Come on, Clarke!” Bellamy yells up at her, hopefully encouragingly. With how loudly he needs to yell to be heard, it probably comes off as aggressive.

In one quick movement, Clarke had her legs wrapped around her own hair, plummeting down towards the earth.

“Do a flip!” Murphy shouts.

––

“Okay, so, you can use the word ‘fucking’ like saying ‘very’, but with more impact. Like, for example, if something is beautiful, you can say, ‘Wow, that’s fucking beautiful’.” Murphy explains, weaving through the trees like it was second nature to him.

“So can I say, ‘I’m fucking tired’?” Clarke asks, a small notebook out to take notes. Bellamy stifles a small grin at how seriously she was taking this. 

“Yes! Perfect! Ten points,” Murphy congratulates, clapping a hand on Clarke’s shoulder.

Clarke smiles to herself, writing down  _ +10  _ in her notes. So far she has forty points.

“Why do you keep track of those? Is there even a solid system?” Bellamy asks, narrowly avoiding stepping on Clarke’s hair. It was everywhere. He couldn’t escape it.

“There is a system. It’s the ‘Murphy System’, and the Murphy System says you have negative two-thousand points.”

“The hell did I do?”

“You questioned me.”

“Don’t blame the system, Bellamy,” Clarke says smiling up at him and nudging his shoulder. She seemed brighter, almost. It was as if the tower was muting her personality along with her magic. The farther they got away from the tower, the more she came out of her shell. He finds himself smiling back without thinking, and he quickly turns his face away. Showing emotion was a weakness when it came to Murphy.

Although it seems like Murphy was more genuine, less snarky around Clarke. Bellamy saw him smile more in the hour they were walking with Clarke than in the entire time he had known him. It was almost sweet, which is a weird thing to associate with Murphy.

“You can also use fuck as in messed up. Like ‘That’s so fucked up’, or—Clarke, you good?”

“You guys are thieves?”

Oh fuck.

Bellamy turns to look at Clarke. She was fixated on two wanted posters, one of the “Blake Bandits” (very cool, in Octavia’s opinion) and one of Murphy, just dubbed as Murphy.

Bellamy’s sketch was one from when he got captured a year ago. He slipped up when he was stealing from an old widow—he didn’t anticipate her having a new husband so soon. Octavia had to break him out, a fact she never let him forget, much to his dismay. He looks younger, expression defiant. Octavia’s doesn’t look  _ that  _ much like her, a fact Bellamy was forever grateful for. She had the same cheekbones, but her eyes were too far apart, lips too thin. It turned her into a cheap imitation of his sister, but he’d take that over infamy any day.

Murphy’s sketch was wild eyed and harried, dark circles giving him a sunken look. He looked tired, his hair in dreads, matted to his head. Murphy rips his own down, balling it up and pushing it deep into his rucksack.

“We gotta eat somehow,” Murphy says, turning on his heel and stalking off.

Clarke turns to Bellamy, her stance defensive. “Is it really necessary?”

“Not everyone is lucky, Clarke. We do what we have to.” Clarke’s shoulders are still raised. Stealing is obviously something she isn’t comfortable with. “It’s not like we steal from everyone. It’s—I have a moral code. Only rich assholes and people who are corrupted. That’s it.” Clarke’s brow was still furrowed, but he could see the wheels turning in her head. She looks back at Bellamy, her expression undecipherable.

Slowly, so goddamned slowly, the fight drains out of Clarke. “You don’t feel guilty?” She asks, more curious this time.

“The guys we take from steal too, they just have more power.”

Clarke nods sagely. “Rich people are assholes.”

This startles an unexpected laugh out of Bellamy, the tension draining out of his shoulders. He grins at her, soft and easy, like they’ve been friends for years, and she grins back.

She runs ahead to go to Murphy, calling out his name. Murphy turns just in time to see Clarke’s hair snag on a branch, her head snapping back as she hits the ground with an  _ oomph. _

“Clarke!” Murphy says, trying and failing to stifle a laugh. “Are you okay?” He says through his muffled giggling.

Bellamy runs up to Clarke, smiling softly. He tries not to show it, but from the look on Clarke’s face he fails miserably. He presses his lips together, feeling a smile escape anyway. He deserves to laugh. He’s been hanging with Murphy.

Clarke just stares resolutely ahead, expression blank, although there’s a deep regret in her eyes.

“Clarke? Clarke, are you gonna get up?” Bellamy asks, prodding her arm,

Clarke stares blankly ahead, eyes unfocused. “Leave me to die.” A red flush makes its way up her neck, the tips of her ears burning red as well.

_ She’s embarrassed. That’s… cute,  _ Bellamy thinks.

He brushes the hair out of her eyes, moving in front of her face so she was at least sort of looking at him. Her eyes were still unfocused, but at least he tried.

“You’re not hurt, right?”

“Not physically.”

Bellamy’s smile grows wider at her dramatics. “Okay,” he says slowly, like he’s talking to a child, “so you can get up.”

“I can, but should I?”

“Yes, you should,” Murphy interjects, hoisting Clarke into a sitting position by her arms. 

Bellamy raises an arm to take out the inevitable twigs and dirt in her hair, but the moment she sat up, they all fall to the ground, leaving her hair clean. 

“How is your hair not messed up?” Murphy asks, unwinding the part of hair that got caught. He sits down and starts dragging the hair that got left behind to him, bundling it up in his arms.

“It’s charmed. I lived in a tower with very limited water. Washing this would be such a hassle,” Clarke says, still looking down at the ground.

Bellamy hums in understanding, sitting next to Murphy and gathering the hair as well.

“I can braid it for you, if you like,” Bellamy offers, once he and Murphy had gathered all the hair. It was soft, and not as heavy as he thought it would be. Maybe the charm covered that aspect too.

Clarke gives a jerky nod, still tomato red. Bellamy gets to work, splitting the hair into three sections and making a simple dutch braid. Murphy pulls a branch from a tree and starts to whittle. The silence was companionable, and it seemed like as good a time as any to ask some questions.

“So, how can you help me find Octavia?” Bellamy asks, gently scritching Clarke’s scalp. She leans into his hands, a bit like a cat.

“Location spell. We’re gonna have to go get the ingredients, though. I have basically nothing.” 

“What do we need to get?” 

Clarke pulls out a thick, leather bound book from her satchel. It’s worn at the edges, paper brown and aged. She holds her hand over it, fingers twitching. The book opens, papers fluttering as if a gust of wind was passing by. Another twitch and the book stops, opening to a blank page. Clarke taps it, and spider webs of ink crawled over the page, revealing words detailing ingredients.

“Okay, so, we need seven ingredients,” Clarke says, bending over her book. “First sign of spring, a Hydra scale, moonlight, hair of a troll, evergreen moss, a magic bean, and a hair of the one we’re looking for. When we find an ingredient we put it on this little circle and it glows if it works.” Clarke gestures to a small circle on the bottom left corner made of vines, intricately woven. 

“First sign of spring? What does that even mean?” Murphy asks, tilting his head to see the book.

“I don’t really know. Spell books  _ love _ to be vague to make sure that you have just the right dash of desperation. What did you expect?” Clarke says, resting her chin on her hand.

“Some clear instructions.” Murphy leans back, staring up. He turns back to Clarke. “Do you think a bud would work?”

“I mean, it can’t be that easy,” Bellamy says, looking to Clarke for support. “Can it?” 

“We can try,” Clarke answers, picking a small bud off of a bush near her. She places it in the circle.

It glows.

Bellamy puts it in his bag.

“We should go to Arcadia. I know someone who can help us,” Bellamy says, putting Clarke’s hair down and pulling out a map from his bag. He lays it out, pointing at a big cluster of trees labelled  _ ‘Gwydyr Forest’. _ “We’re here.” His hand moves to an orange circle,  _ Arcadia  _ in stark black letters dance on top of it. “We need to go here. It’ll take about a day and a half.”

“I heard this cave has a beast with many heads,” Murphy interjects, pointing at a small lump of gray on the map. “Think it’s the Hydra?”

“Only one way to find out,” Clarke replies. She scrutinises the map more carefully. “It’s a small detour, so it wouldn’t hurt to check, right?”

Bellamy hums in agreement, looking to Murphy to see what he thought. He stops halfway, wondering when he started caring about what  _ Murphy _ thought. He was getting soft.

Murphy doesn’t notice his double take. “Sounds good to me.”

Clarke nods.“Then it’s settled. After this, we’ll go check out the Hydra.”

“If it’s there,” Bellamy corrects.

“If it’s there,” Clarke agrees.

“Cool then,” Murphy says, getting to his feet. He murmurs a quick, “I’ll be back,” and disappears into the forest. Rationally, Bellamy knows there is no real guarantee that Murphy will be back and he isn’t sure if that’s a good thing or not.

Bellamy lifts the hair he’s holding in one hand, checking its weight. It doesn’t feel like anything which weirds him out. “Do you mind questions?”

“About what?”

“You, in general. You can ask me questions, too, and we can always just say skip if we don’t wanna answer.”

Clarke thinks about it. Before Bellamy could backtrack she nods enthusiastically. “You go first,” she says, turning back to look at him. 

Bellamy smiles at her, pushing her cheek so she faces the front again. The braid was gonna be crooked if he didn’t. “Why isn’t your hair heavy?”

“Charmed. When did you start stealing?”

“I was seventeen, Octavia was eleven.”

“You let her come along that young?”

“Yes, Clarke, I willingly let my baby sister come with me to steal from dangerous men,” Bellamy deadpans.

“I don’t know, maybe it’s an initiation thing,” Clarke huffs.

“Initiation for what?”

“Being a thief?”

Bellamy shakes his head, laughing quietly. “Octavia wouldn’t let me go alone. If I went without her, she’d follow me. I realised it was easier to just let her come than have her pop up in the trees and scare me half to death.”

Clarke hums in acknowledgement, picking the grass around her. “Your turn,” she says.

“Why is your hair so long?” Bellamy says immediately.

“Wow, didn’t even have to think about it.”

“It’s kind of a defining thing.”

Clarke turns again to smile at him. Bellamy just gently bats her face until she looks forward. Braiding is serious business. “It’s charmed. The answer is always ‘charmed’. It needed to be long enough so the witch could get in the tower since there’s no door.”

“Pretty convenient,” Bellamy says, cracking his cramped fingers.

“When you have twenty metres of hair the most convenient route is the only route,” Clarke says, turning to look at Bellamy again. He was about a meter away from her, braiding the hair again. Enough of it was braided so she could look back at him without making the braid crooked, which was fine by him. It wasn’t exactly taxing to look at Clarke.

“What’s your favourite colour?” Clarke asks, sitting cross-legged.

“Seriously? That’s what you’re asking?”

“You’re the first person I’ve met in a while. I wanna know,” Clarke shrugs, expression guarded.

Bellamy regards her for a second, the corners of his mouth ticking up. Surprisingly, no one had asked him before. Octavia was busy growing up and Murphy certainly didn’t care. He stays silent, thinking about it. “Blue,” he settles on, “I like blue.” Blue was calming. Blue was familiar. And if blue reminded him of a certain pair of eyes, no one needed to know. Clarke beams at him, eyes crinkling. He felt a strange surge of pride at getting her to smile. “What’s your favourite?” Bellamy asks.

“Yellow.”

“It suits you,” Bellamy says, hands still moving to braid.

They ask questions until the braid is done. Bellamy finds out a myriad of things, including her favourite food (apples) and her birthday (sometime in summer, she can’t remember when). She in turn, finds out other things, like the weirdest way he’s gotten hurt (a freak horse accident) and if he wanted kids (maybe someday). Just as Bellamy finishes the braid, Murphy is back, basket of flowers in hand.

“It’s important to accessorize,” Murphy says, dropping the basket of flowers into Clarke’s lap.

Clarkes face screws up in confusion. “You didn’t leave with a basket. Why do you have a basket?” She asks. Bellamy watches as Clarke’s face lights up at the flowers. She takes one and admires it, tucking it behind her ear.

“Griffin. I’m a thief. Do the math.”

Clarke gives Murphy an unimpressed look, trying to roll her eyes. Instead of actually rolling, she just kind of looks up then back down. It’s a work in progress. 

Bellamy ties a yellow ribbon to the end of her hair, knotting it neatly.

“I can do a sticking charm on these so they stay in,” Clarke says, fingers gently glowing. 

“How well does the sticking charm work?” Murphy asks, plopping down to sit in front of Clarke.

In lieu of an answer, Clarke takes a small pink flower in her hand. Her fingers glow again, this time leaving a shimmering trace. Once the underside of the flower was covered in a white gleam, she turns to Murphy and presses it on his face, just under his eye. Her fingers move away and the flower stays there.

Murphy tugs at it, and the flower still stays there. He holds his cheek with one hand and pulls it with the other. The flower stays there. After a couple minutes of trying to pry it off with his knife, he finally concedes defeat. “Jokes on you,” Murphy says, patting his reddening cheek, “I just look prettier.”

Clarke snorts, laughing harder at Murphy’s affronted look. Bellamy lets a small chuckle out, trying to discreetly cover his mouth. Murphy raises an eyebrow at him. “What? You don’t agree?”

“Murphy, you could have a whole bouquet on your face and children would still run screaming,” Bellamy says. Murphy half-heartedly throws a paper ball at him which he easily catches, tossing it back. 

“You’re just jealous you don’t have one,” Murphy says, because apparently he is five years old.

Turning his back on Murphy, Bellamy finds a small forget-me-not in the basket, gently taking Clarke’s hand, giving her plenty of time to pull away. When she doesn’t, he revels slightly in her warmth before remembering his original goal. He lightly traces her finger over his flower, then sticks it on the high point of his cheekbone.

“There,” Bellamy says vindictively, smirking at Murphy, “I have one now and you’re still ugly.”

Bellamy is also, apparently, five years old.

Before Murphy can retort, Clarke holds up the basket. “It’ll only stay there for about a day. Come on,” Clarke says, gesturing to the flowers, “let's get these in my hair.”

They spend the next half hour decorating Clarke’s hair, bickering the entire time over what goes where. Eventually they finish, Clarke’s giddy laughter filling the space when she gets a good look at their handy work.

It was tastefully done, although Murphy did spend a lot of time advocating for complete coverage with flowers. Bellamy managed to get a sort-of gradient, starting from white and then going down to yellow, pink and finally blue. Little sprouts broke up the monotony of the flowers. It was quite well done, in Bellamy’s opinion.

Once Clarke had sufficiently admired it, they packed their things and started in a brisk walk to the Hydra.

***

The cave was underwhelming. It was just another section of forest, this time with a craggy outcrop of rock protruding out from a hillside. Moss tumbled down above, slightly obscuring the opening of the cave. 

It would be pretty ordinary if it weren’t for the multiple signs stuck in the ground, advertising warnings such as,  _ BEAST _ , _ DEMON INSIDE _ , and Bellamy’s personal favourite,  _ BIG FUCKIN MONSTER _ . 

“The Hydra’s probably in there,” Murphy says, lightly hopping over something that looks suspiciously like a bone.

“Gee, what gave it away?” Bellamy asks, arms sweeping over all the signs. Murphy just flips him off and peers into the mouth of the cave, straining to see something out of the ordinary.

“Looks like a cave,” Clarke says, unimpressed. “Let’s check it out.” She hoists her satchel up higher on her shoulder and marches inside. 

Just before she reaches the threshold, Bellamy’s hand shoots out to grab her arm. “You can’t just run in there like that,” Bellamy says, putting himself in between Clarke and the mouth of the cave. “We don’t know where the Hydra is. You could get hurt.”

“Well we’re gonna have to go in there anyway,” Clarke shrugs.

“We go in together. Watch each other’s backs.”

“On second thought,” Murphy says, leaning against the entrance of the cave, “I think I’m gonna stay out here. You know, someone needs to look out and—”

“Nope,” Clarke interrupts, pulling Murphy and Bellamy with her into the cave, “you’re with us now.”

“Jesus, how are you so strong?” Murphy sputters, lightly jogging to keep up. 

“Years of pulling people up a tower and condensed rage.”

Once their inside and the light at the entrance isn’t helping them see anymore Clarke lets go of them, holding up a hand. A small orb of warm light forms and hovers just above it. Bellamy scrunches up his nose and reels back a bit in the sudden brightness. When his eyes adjust, he sees Murphy trying to poke the orb. Everytime his finger gets near, however, the orb just moves away, as if it’s repelled by Murphy’s finger.

“Come on, we’re wasting time,” Bellamy says, settling his hand on the small of Clarke’s back and guiding her forward.

The inside is cold and damp, a mysterious slimy film coating the wall. When Bellamy touches it, it pulls away in strings. “That’s not concerning,” Bellamy mutters to himself.

Bones litter the floor, first only coming up in small increments. The deeper they went, the more cropped up. After a while, they stumble upon their first full skeleton, still dressed in its armor, the Arcadian sun adorning the breast plate. Bellamy maneuvers himself so it was mostly hidden in view from Clarke. Apparently, he doesn’t do this as discreetly as he thought, judging by the look Murphy gives him. He stares resolutely ahead, hand occasionally reaching out to steady Clarke as they walk.

They move steadily, a sound of rushing water filling the air. The air is stale and damp, vague objects crunching under their feet. Bellamy spots something glinting in the ground. Curiosity gets the better of him, and he stops and picks it up off of the floor. He holds it up to Clarke’s light, and upon further inspection he sees it’s a dagger. In one quick motion, he unsheathes it. The blade is still sharp, though a little rusted.

“Here,” Bellamy offers, handing the dagger to Clarke. He keeps the hilt pointed at her since stabbing her is definitely not on his agenda today. Clarke takes it hesitantly, testing out the weight in her hand. She holds it with the blade pointing down, thumb on the hilt. 

“If you hold it like that anyone can take your dagger from you,” Bellamy says, taking her hand in his. In the gentle glow of Clarke’s magic he sees just how big his hands are compared to hers. Where hers are pale and soft, his are tanned and calloused.

He shakes his head slightly, clearing it.  _ Not now,  _ he thinks _.  _ Returning back to the task on hand, he adjusts the dagger so the blade is pointing away from her. Taking her fingers, he moves them until they’re in a fist, dagger closed in tight. “This makes it a lot harder for people to take it away,” Bellamy says. He looks to see if she’s paying attention and notices a slight blush on her cheeks. He smiles slightly to himself at her reaction, unable to stop it. Stepping back, he watches her inspect the dagger.

Clarke moves her hand from side to side, stabbing the air a bit. Once she’s sufficiently tested it out, she gives Bellamy a small smile. “Thanks,” Clarke says, taking the sheath from Bellamy, she securely ties it around her waist, tucking the dagger back into it. 

Murphy sends Bellamy another look which he pointedly ignores. They’re about to fight a  _ Hydra _ . Feelings can wait.

They keep moving until the sound of rushing water is as clear as day. The ceiling steadily gets higher and higher until they reach a dome-like room, a lake sitting in the center of it. Bones litter the floor, almost covering it in a dense layer.

“Okay. What’s the plan?” Murphy asks, unstrapping his own twin daggers from his back.

Bellamy waits for someone to say something, trying to scope out the lake from the small alcove they’re hiding out in. When the silence stretches on, he turns his gaze to his friends, only to see them staring back with expectant expressions.

“Why do I need to come up with a plan?” Bellamy demands.

“That’s your role. The planning guy,” Murphy answers, tightening the straps on his bag.

“When did we decide this?” Murphy shrugs in response, noncommittal. “I don’t have a plan.”

“You don’t have one?” Murphy asks, incredulous.

“Well you’re not really offering anything up, either!”

“Okay, fine. I say we get it to show its face, get a scale, then run like hell.”

“Uh, guys?” Clarke puts in, tugging gently on Bellamy’s sleeve. He barely notices.

“That’s gonna get us killed,” Bellamy hisses, “I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I can outrun a fucking  _ Hydra.  _ There has to be a better way.”

“Guys,” Clarke tries again, shaking more forcefully.

“Then tell me the better way,” Murphy says, “because I sure as hell don’t see one.”

“Well Hydras die when they’re crushed. We find some debris, and get it to—”

“Fall on it? Are you forgetting we’re in this cave—”

“Guys!” Clarke snaps, smacking both of their heads.

“What?” Murphy yells, still keyed up from his argument with Bellamy.

“Look.” She points to the lake, body rigid and tense. 

Slowly, as if that would put off the threat, Bellamy turns his head.

Four gold eyes on two different heads stare back at him. They rise from inky depths, water cascading off of their scales as they unfurl their great necks. Grey, iridescent scales glint across their bodies, taut with anticipation. 

Bellamy carefully takes out his own dagger, desperate for any kind of defense. He would normally have better weapons but Octavia took them to clean on the day she went missing. Yet another reason why he needs her back. That, and the fact that she is his sister.

“What do we do?” Clarke whispers, even though she was shouting two minutes before.

“We fuckin’ run!” Murphy says, voice rising in volume with each word. He grabs Clarke’s arm and runs with her into the cave, hugging the wall. Clarke scrambles for Bellamy but before she can get a firm hold she’s already running, stumbling along with Murphy. 

“Murphy, you dickhead!” Bellamy calls after him, scrambling to his feet and running in the opposite direction. He might as well provide a distraction.

One head goes for Murphy and Clarke while the other sets its sights on Bellamy. He sees it rear back, and that’s when he decides to really start booking it.

He can hear the water splashing behind him, sloshing at the sides of the lake. A snap scares him into an ill timed jump. He rolls on the ground, trying to ride out the momentum when sharp jaws narrowly miss biting his arm off. Up close, the head is as big as his body, eyes the size of his head. In a spur of the moment move, he twists his body away quickly, creating an opening which he uses to drive his dagger into the center of the eye closest to him.

It slides in with a sickening  _ squelch,  _ the blunt edge tearing more than cutting its way in. The Hydra roars, an all consuming sound that Bellamy feels deep in his chest, rattling his ribcage. The Hydra goes wild, shaking its head rapidly as it tries to dislodge the knife. While doing this, it hits Bellamy square in his stomach, sending him soaring backwards.

He skids across the floor, momentarily winded. Forcing himself to look up, he sees that the head he stabbed was still disoriented, writhing and screaming. The head that was tormenting Murphy and Clarke turns to him, a snarl twisting its face. It reaches for him, a clawed foot coming out of the water to swipe where he lay.

Bellamy rolls away, clambering to his feet. His knees buckle, sending him to the ground. A hot, searing pain in his leg tells him that he did actually get hit. Raising his arms—or at least trying to—proves futile since they’ve become lead at his side.Forcing his arms to cooperate, he drags himself forward, desperation clawing at him. It’s move or die. He doesn’t want to be another one of those skeletons. He’s going to live.

A blast of light catches him off guard. He steals a quick glance up and sees Clarke looking at her hands with something akin to awe. It’s enough to distract the Hydra who’s snarling at the place the light sizzled out.  _ Not the brightest,  _ Bellamy thinks.

The outcrop of rock where Murphy and Clarke are hiding is still too far away _. _ At the rate Bellamy is crawling at he’ll be eaten before he can reach the halfway point. He has to get up or he’s as good as dead. __

Gritting his teeth, Bellamy forces himself up to his feet. A small cry of pain escapes before he can clench down on it and Bellamy prays to gods he doesn’t believe in that the Hydra didn’t hear. 

He sees Clarke’s eyes trained on the Hydra, occasionally sending a small blast of light to keep them occupied. She turns to look at him and holds a hand out, waiting.

Her hand sends a small burst of energy through him. He needs to get to it. He will get to it.

He reaches for her, the distance between them getting shorter and shorter.  _ Just a bit farther. Just a bit— _

His feet stumble, sending him pitching forward. Clarke’s there to catch him, though, She lets out a small  _ oof  _ as her arms encircle him. 

“Hey,” she breathes, breath fanning out on the side of his face.

“Hey,” Bellamy parrots, letting himself collapse a little. Clarke pushes him back, holding him at an arm's length. Her eyes flit over his face, studying his face intently. Slowly, Bellamy brings up a hand to smooth out the worry lines in her face, offering a wry smile, trying to tell her that even though he’s been horribly sliced open, he’s fine.

Murphy clears his throat abruptly, breaking the spell. One eyebrow is raised, in a  _ really?  _ gesture. Clarke sends another blast of light—and is it just Bellamy or are they getting smaller?—but she accidentally goes too wide with her mark. The Hydra lets out a growl of surprise, turning to where the light hit the wall. It was much too close to them for Bellamy’s liking.

Clarke must have been thinking the same thing because the next blast she sends out is on the far side of the cave, directing the Hydra there instead. Clarke lets out a breath, sagging slightly.

“Are you okay?” Bellamy asks, dragging himself so he’s leaning on the rock outcropping.

“I should be asking you that,” she replies.

“While this reunion is sweet and all,” Murphy says, crouching down to Bellamy’s level, “we really need a plan to get the scale and get the fuck out.”

Clarke ducks her head, ears slightly pink. Bellamy shoots a glare at Murphy who in turn just shrugs. 

“We could tie their heads together?” Bellamy offers. Murphy just gives him a flat, unimpressed look. “This is why I’m not the plan guy,” Bellamy mutters lowly.

“Wait. That… that might actually work,” Clarke says, eyes widening. Bellamy can almost see the gears turning in her head, working out the kinks of her plan.

“Clarke, no—”

“Just listen for a second, Bellamy,” Clarke interrupts, putting a hand on his and squeezing once. Bellamy feels like defying for just a moment longer before flipping his hand around and interlacing their fingers, reluctantly clicking his mouth shut. He nods, silently signalling for her to continue. “Okay, so, we tie their heads together so they can’t eat us and grab a scale. Then, we run.”

Murphy is nodding his head, following along. “Yeah, okay, cool,” he says with fake cheer, “and when they rip us open with their claws what do we then?”

“It’s just two things to dodge,” Clarke assures, “we’ll be fine.”

“Why can’t you just, I don’t know, shoot it with some magic?”

“I’ve never learnt violent-magics,” Clarke huffs. 

“Oh my god,” Murphy mutters under his breath, scrubbing a hand over his face. 

“Listen, it’ll be fine. It’s basically crocheting, except the wool wants to kill you.”

“What the fuck,” Murphy states, the words coming out flat.

“Okay, so, uh, you distract the one with one eye and I’ll take care of it. Also, don’t get killed.”

“ _ What. The actual. Fuck.” _

Murphy lets out a harsh breath, grumbling about how he’ll probably die. He leaves the outcrop, hugging the wall and putting some distance between it and him.

“What should I do?” Bellamy asks, tightening his grip infinitesimally on Clarke’s hand before she can leave.

“Stay put.”

“What? No, I’m coming with you,” Bellamy demands, trying to push himself up. His leg starts protesting immediately, throbbing violently. Before he can make it very far Clarke places her hand on his sternum, firmly holding him in place.

“You’re hurt.”

“I can still—”

“No, you can’t,” Clarke says, cutting him off. Bellamy opens his mouth to argue, but Clarke just tugs her hand out of his grip and puts it over his mouth, effectively silencing him. “You’re hurt, and I can’t do this while I’m thinking about you, okay?” Bellamy stares up at her with every intention to keep arguing with her about it. He  _ will  _ do something. He can’t be useless.

“Please?” Clarke whispers, soft. 

All the fight drains out of him with that one word. He nods once, pulling her hand away from his mouth. “Be safe,” Bellamy says, brushing his thumbs over his knuckles.

“I will.”

She turns to go but hesitates, holding back. Quicker than he can blink, she gives him a small peck on his cheek, turning away before he can say anything. 

Bellamy stills, heat rushing to his face. He was  _ not  _ blushing. He was just feverish. It was the flesh wound.

Yeah, blame it one the flesh wound.

Now alone, he gives in to the temptation to press his fingers to where he could still feel her lips ghost his cheek. Before he could think about possible feelings bubbling up a snarl sounded, low and constant.

He whips his head around, trying to position himself so his leg isn’t a throbbing mess. Clarke has her hand in a fist, holding it towards Murphy, who was watching it like a hawk, waiting for a signal. 

Quicker than Bellamy could blink, Clarke’s hand was flat, palm down.

Murphy springs into action, yelling and waving his arms.

“Hey!” Murphy yells, throwing a rock in the general direction of the head with a dagger in it. It swivels to look at him, the undaggered head preoccupied with Clarke. “Yeah, you, you long-necked asshole!” The daggered head tilts in something akin to confusion. “You hungry?” The head seems to snap back into reality with these words, coiling up, ready to strike. “Then come and get this cake!” Murphy shouts, punctuating his sentence by sticking out his ass, pointing at it.

The head surges forward, Murphy running like hell to the other side of the cave, crossing its neck in front of the other one. This pulls at the undaggered one. It yelps, as if affronted that it has to move, and goes in for Clarke. Bellamy loses sight of Murphy and shifts his gaze to look back at Clarke. She sprints forward as if…

As if she was running straight at the Hydra.

“Clarke, no!” Bellamy yells, but the words come out strangled. She pays him no mind as she runs across the claw that was sticking out, aiming for the juncture where the two necks meet the body. The undaggered head pushes forward, not noticing that to do this he has to go over and under the other neck, tying them.

_ What now?  _ Bellamy thinks, hand going to his side for his knife. He grabs at air, realising that his knife is currently buried in the eye of a fucking  _ Hydra.  _ What has his life come to?

The daggered head looks back from tormenting Murphy, staring at the part where their necks loop together. 

Bellamy watches with muffled horror as Murphy sprints, vaulting himself onto the Hydra and driving his daggers into it, effectively anchoring himself to its side. He drags his daggers in a jagged circle, taking out a chunk of the beast.

The roar it lets out is deafening.

It rises up out of the water, howling in pain. It swings itself rapidly, as if trying to shake Murphy and Clarke off. 

It works.

Clarke gets thrown, her body flying through the air like a rag doll. She hits the wall behind Bellamy, and while he can’t hear the impact, the sight of it was enough to make his stomach roll. Murphy has more luck, rolling on the ground and getting to his feet. He staggers for a couple of steps, shoving the chunk of Hydra into his bag. 

Bellamy crawls over to Clarke, ignoring how his leg protests the movement. He cradles her face in his hand, gently brushing her hair out of her face. “Clarke,” Bellamy whispers, shaking her. Clarke wheezes out a pitiful cough, chest rising and falling. The relief he feels is staggering. It was a little shallow but it’ll do for now. 

Bellamy picks his head up to yell for help, but decides against it. He tries to catch Murphy’s eye, waving wildly. Murphy was… Murphy was ignoring him.

Bellamy watches as he dodges bones and carcasses.  _ Is he… he’s leaving us. _ Bellamy thinks. This is it. Murphy’s leaving them to die.

That fucking asshole.

Murphy is on the precipice of the exit, about to leave when he  _ finally  _ looks back at Bellamy. Bellamy watches the indecision flutter over his face. Murphy glances back at the Hydra that’s still struggling to untangle itself, crying pitifully every now and then. He stops, doing an awkward shuffle, as if deciding whether or not he should leave or go to them. He scrunches up his face, shoulders bunching, before jogging to them.

“Why are you still here?” Bellamy bites out, a small pang of guilt going through him when he catches Murphy wince very slightly. He clamps down on it, refusing to feel guilty. He was going to leave them. He deserves to be bitter.

“I won’t leave you,” Murphy says, resolute, as if he knew what Bellamy was thinking.

Words tumble out of Bellamy before he can stop them, low and harsh. “I don’t give a fuck if you leave me or not. I know you. I know what you’re like. But Clarke?” Murphy’s eyes flick over to where Clarke lays, where she’s slowly regaining consciousness. Bellamy quiets his voice to a whisper, sounding more like a hiss with his anger. “Clarke doesn’t. Right now, we’re all she has. Don’t fuck it up.”

Murphy looks Bellamy in the eye, unwavering. “I won’t,” he repeats, solemn. Bellamy holds his stare for a second longer breaking eye contact.

“Get Clarke on your back,” Bellamy says, pulling her up. They get Clarke situated, her arms looping around Murphy. Bellamy feels a quiet ebb of jealousy flare up as Clarke drapes around him, which is stupid. He needs to concentrate on Octavia right now. Clarke doesn’t even like him like that. She might not even like men.

So stupid.

Another cry from the Hydra reminds them that they need to  _ leave.  _ Murphy stands, waiting until Bellamy is on his own feet. Bellamy grips the wall, using it to support himself as pain explodes in his leg with each step. Tears burn in the back of his eyes and he grits his teeth, pushing forward.

The way back was dark without Clarke’s light. It was easier than going in, however, since there was a light at the end.

They trip a couple of times, but eventually, they make it out, practically throwing themselves onto the soft grass.

Murphy lays Clarke down, flopping down beside her and panting heavily. 

Bellamy sees Clarke stir and is immediately at her side, or at least as immediate as he can be with one leg.

“Are you okay?” Bellamy asks, smoothing the hair out of her face.

“I’m fine,” she assures him. Bellamy doesn’t stop running his hands down her arms, looking for any injuries. She huffs out a small laugh as his expression turns incredulous. “Really, Bellamy. I’m okay.”

“What about me?” Murphy says, petulant.

Bellamy sighs, over the top. He turns to Murphy, who is pouting like a child. Bellamy glares at him, quirking an eyebrow up. “Murphy. Are you okay?”

“Physically? Yes. Emotionally? I may never recover.”

Bellamy rolls his eyes, turning back to Clarke who was propped up on her elbows.

“Did we get it?” She asks, hoarse.

Murphy pulls out a bloody mass the size of his palm out of his bag, brandishing it with a grin. “Enough for a shit ton of location spells.”

“Fuck yeah!” Clarke whoops, smiling wide. Bellamy laughs with her, nudging her shoulder with his.

Clarke sweeps her gaze over him, doing a slight double take at his leg. It’s completely soaked in blood, turning his pants a dark red, almost brown colour. “Oh...  _ fuck _ ,” she says, tongue tripping over the swear, “why didn’t you say anything sooner?”

“I told you in the cave.”

“I meant sooner  _ after!” _

“I—what? That makes no sense.”

“Your face makes no sense,” Clarke shoots back, flustered.

“Sick burn,” Murphy says sarcastically, wrapping the Hydra chunk in spare fabric.

Clarke throws a stick at him, ignoring his undignified squawk in favour of making Bellamy sit properly with his leg stretched out. She takes her knife from the sheath at her side and cuts his pant leg away so she can properly see the wound. It's a straight line across his calf, stopping just shy of his knee. 

Bellamy takes the waterskin from his bag, splashing water on the wound. He hisses sharply when the water connects. It washes away most of the blood, only leaving the dry stragglers hanging back. It was deep, that much he could see. He takes a bit of spare cloth and dries the skin around the cut, dabbing lightly.

Clarke tugs her book out of her satchel, flipping through it, leaving little bloody fingerprints on the pages. 

“Why don’t you do your fancy air flipping thing?” Murphy asks.

“That was just for show,” Clarke answers, still determinedly flipping. She stops suddenly near the end of the book, quickly skimming the page. “Okay. So, it’s pretty deep but this spell should basically act as stitches.”

“Basically?” Bellamy says, scooting slightly away.

“It will. I mean it will act as stitches,” Clarke assures, putting a hand on his leg. Bellamy stops moving, even though her touch is light. He could easily sew it up himself but a part of him wants Clarke to do it. For purely platonic reasons.

Feelings are stupid.

After a moment of determined muttering, Clarke speaks. “Okay, I think I got it down.” 

“Ya’ think?” Murphy says, looking over from where he’s whittling a large stick.

“Clarke, have you ever actually done this before?” Bellamy asks.

“Uh… kinda?”

“ _ Clarke. _ ”

“Okay, fine, maybe I haven’t—but!” Clarke interjects when she sees Bellamy about to protest, “ _ But,  _ I have done all of this.” Clarke gestures to the symbols on the book. “Just separately.”

Bellamy lets out a breath, letting it take some of his tension. “You sure you can do it?”

“Yes,” Clarke says, sure.

“Go ahead then. I trust you.” Right as he said it, Bellamy felt taken aback. The words were true and so  _ easy  _ to say. Maybe even too easy. He hasn’t really had anyone to trust until now. Octavia was a given, and he sure as hell didn’t trust Murphy. This was new territory for him. 

Clarke’s face lights up at that and she smiles at him. “Okay. Well, get ready. This might hurt.”

“It might— _ holy mother of god,”  _ Bellamy curses. Sharp, tingling sensations prick his leg, running up and down the length of the wound. It’s frequent enough that he loses track of each sharp stab, although he can still feel them in waves. He bites down on his fist, trying to stop the small noises of hurt.

Clarke keeps murmuring, “ _ Sorry! Sorry, sorry, _ ” which was doing more harm than good. The repetitive mantra keys him up, making him anxious. He grabs Clarke’s hand, cutting off her rambling.

“It’s fine,” he grits out, squeezing her hand, being mindful not to crush it.

Clarke nods softly, going back to her work. With a final wave of her other hand—the one that’s not holding Bellamy’s–the pain abruptly stops. Bellamy gasps at the absence of pain, immediately looking at his leg.

There was nothing there. He still had his leg, obviously, but the skin there was unmarred.

“I thought this was supposed to be stitches?” Murphy says, making Bellamy jump a little. Amidst the pain he must have moved closer without him noticing.

Clarke furrows her brows, taking the book in her hand again. “Oh, no, it was a healing spell.”

“Oh no?”

“It’s—the healing isn’t a bad thing; it just hurts way worse than stitches.”

“Yeah,” Bellamy says, still panting a little, “I figured.”

Clarke smiles apologetically, though it comes out more like a grimace. 

“Is that why you don’t heal yourself?” Bellamy asks, bending his knee and testing out his leg. 

“Uh, no, I can’t heal myself ‘cause the magic’s already there.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s… It’s like repairing a bucket but to repair it you rip up that bucket to fix the hole. There’s always gonna be a hole because there’s no new material to patch it up,” Clarke explains, rubbing her hands on some nearby moss to get rid of the blood on her hands. 

Bellamy nods to himself, absorbing this information. “You’re not too badly hurt, are you?”

Clarke pats herself down, checking for injuries. “Just some bruises.”

“Alright,” Murphy says with fake cheer, a wide smile plastered on his face, “let’s get this show on the road!”

They put everything back into their respective bags, pulling out the map once more. 

Bellamy traces the path, memorizing it. “Next stop: Arcadia.”

***

“You’re shit is an insult, you are the shit is a compliment, and you’re not shit is an insult, but it can also be a reassurance,” Murphy says, ambling alongside Clarke whose face is contorted into a look of confusion. She looks to Bellamy for help but he offers none, simply shrugging his shoulders and grinning.

They were trying to make the most of their daylight, trekking through the forest to get a head start on their trip to Arcadia. Bellamy had changed his pants about an hour prior, not wanting to draw attention with only one pant leg.

“What the fuck,” she breathes out, a statement more than a question.

“You didn’t even hesitate this time!” Murphy congratulates, slapping Clarke’s back good-naturedly. “Thirty points.”

“Bellamy,” Clarke says, tapping his arm to get his attention, “is he fucking with me?”

Murphy huffs an offended sound, putting a hand to his chest.

Bellamy sways to Clarke, bumping their shoulders together. “Do you really think he has the brains to do that?”

“Minus one billion points for Bellamy,” Murphy intervenes, prodding Bellamy hard in the head.

“Your corrupt system means nothing to me,” Bellamy says, solemn.

Whatever Murphy was about to say was cut off by a deep, vengeful grumbling. Bellamy looks to Clarke who is decidedly looking forward, face neutral.

“Was that your stomach?” Murphy asks Clarke, craning to look at her.

“We haven’t eaten yet,” Clarke says defensively.

Bellamy stops, setting his bag down. “We should set up camp. It’s getting dark anyway.”

“Yeah, cool,” Murphy agrees. He cocks his head to the side, eyes focusing on some distant, far off point. They slowly shift back into focus as Murphy’s head rights itself. “Cheep, cheep. Twitty chip cheep tweet.” A short whistle sounds and Murphy nods, satisfied. “The birds say that there are some rabbit burrows nearby. I’m gonna go get dinner.”

Bellamy doesn’t look up from where he’s gathering sticks for a fire. “You’re so full of shit.”

“That’s a bad thing, right?” Clarke says, arms full of dry leaves.

“Yeah, it’s a bad thing.”

Murphy leaves his bag, taking out his daggers and strapping them onto his back. “You’re gonna regret that when I come back with rabbits for me and Clarke.”

Bellamy snorts. “If you come back at all.”

“Cheep cheep.” There is no response when he speaks again. “The birds say it’s safe. Later fuckface. Clarke.”

Murphy stalks off into the woods, his footsteps silent, blending into the ambience.

The silence he leaves in his wake is awkward, to say the least.

“Do you wanna help me collect firewood?” Bellamy asks, breaking the tension.

“Sure,” Clarke answers, brushing her hair out of her face.

They walk in the opposite direction where Murphy left, in case they disturb his hunting which Bellamy seriously doubts. As they walk, Clarke’s hair gets snagged on branches and bushes. They have to stop every few minutes to get her untangled which Bellamy doesn’t mind, since he uses that time to collect more wood.

The next time her hair gets stuck, Clarke growls in frustration, arms glowing red.

“Hey, hey, it’s fine,” Bellamy says placatingly, before Clarke sets the entire forest on fire.

Clarke takes a deep breath, slowly deflating. Her arms return back to normal, hanging limply at her side. “I’m slowing you down. It was stupid of me to come,” Clarke says, roughly tugging at her hair.

“No, it wasn’t. I like the company.” Bellamy sets his bundle of wood and kindling down before gently unweaving Clarke’s hair. “I think we have enough, anyway.”

“You wanna go back?”

“Lead the way,” Bellamy says.

The walk back was quicker since Clarke cradled her hair with one arm, carrying her tinder with another. When they got back, Bellamy unceremoniously dumped everything on the ground, gesturing for Clarke to do the same.

“Can you light a fire?” Bellamy asks, still not entirely sure of her capabilities. Maybe she can’t do it on command. It’s always good to check.

“Yeah,” Clarke says, dusting off her dress, “just tell me where.”

Bellamy sets up a fire pit, digging out a hole and lining it with stones. The motions are familiar, something he craves after days of reckless adventure. He arranges the tinder, putting the dry leaves in the center and surrounding it with kindling.

“Just light that,” Bellamy says, pointing at the small bundle.

Clarke does as he asks, nose scrunching up slightly in concentration. Bellamy wanted to see if her nose would scrunch up like that if he kissed it, or if she would react differently. He got lost for a second, only brought back when her fingers started glowing a soft, warm orange. 

Clarke holds a leaf between her forefinger and thumb, a small ember forming. Bellamy takes the bundle, cradling it in his hands and blowing into it, giving it oxygen. It takes a second before it bursts into life, rapidly burning. 

He finishes building the fire, coaxing it until the flames are capable of sustaining themselves. He leans back to observe his work, but his eyes are drawn to Clarke’s hands, which are fiddling with her braid. The sun was setting, casting an orange glow across everything it touched. The canopy of trees above are quite thick, however, so only dashes of light peek through. One of them lit up Clarke’s hair, setting it aflame with colour. Bellamy vaguely wondered about what would happen if her hair actually caught on fire. Did she have some sort of magical connection with it? Would she die if it was cut?

“I want to cut it.”

Well there goes that thought.

“Cut what?” Bellamy asks, even though he’s quite sure he knows what she wants to cut. He’s being considerate.

“My hair. It’s… It’s annoying. And probably a health hazard. And–” Her voice stutters here, sputtering out a bit before gaining life again, “–I don’t need it anymore.”

Bellamy lets the words hang, watching Clarke’s face for a sign of hesitation. Her hair is a big part of her. She’s had it for–well since forever, really. All he sees, though, is surety in her decision.

“I can cut your hair,” Bellamy says, fumbling beside him for his bag.

“Yeah?” Clarke says, the word slow and unsure.

“Yeah,” he affirms, taking his scissors and digging around for a comb. He’s gotta have one somewhere. “O’s hair grew really fast–she hated it in her face. I’d always cut it until she decided braiding it was cooler.”

Bellamy smiles at the memory, moving to sit behind Clarke. She settles in between his legs, untangling her braid as she gets comfortable. Most of the flowers had fallen off at this point, leaving only a few stragglers. Bellamy lost his during the walk to the Hydra, and Murphy’s fell off god knows where. She leans back slightly, her head lightly resting against his stomach. “You–you’re not gonna mess up, right?”

“If I do, we have enough hair to make a wig.”

Clarke snorts, making Bellamy laugh with her. It was a stupid joke, but she laughs like it’s the funniest thing she heard in a while. It probably is, considering she spent most of her formative years in a tower.

Bellamy readies his scissors, pausing only when he realises he has no idea how to start. He settles with splitting the hair into two parts, planning to chop those off and then clean up the edges.

“How short do you want it?”

“Um, about here?” Clarke gestures to a hands length underneath her collarbone. Short enough to be a reasonable change but long enough to not be too much of a shock.

“You ready?” Bellamy asks, taking one of the halves in his hand. Clarke makes a noise of acknowledgement, her leg jittering up and down relentlessly.

“Three. Two–” Bellamy starts cutting before he gets to one. The noise of the scissors cutting through her hair fill the silence. It takes a bit of sawing, but eventually, it comes off. He passes the chunk of hair to Clarke, fluffing up her hair a bit. The end of it is like a mountain range, all sharp lines and rough edges.

Clarke’s face however, is the exact opposite. Her eyes are lit up with excitement, mouth stretched wide. She grins up at Bellamy, taking the hair in slightly shaking hands. She does a full body shake, childlike in her excitement. Bellamy can’t help but smile as he watches her bop in place, unable to stop a giddy laugh from escaping.

“It feels so… weird,” Clarke says, pulling a face and reaching back to run her fingers through her hair. Her fingers pull on the other half of her hair, still tied up. “Cut the rest!” she demands, sitting up straight and stroking the hank of hair in her hands. Her fingers never stop playing with her new length, dancing on the ragged edge.

Bellamy gives her no warning for the second half, instead choosing to cut it as quickly as possible. It ends up cut at an angle, poofing out a bit. When the scissors finally make their way through, Clarke gives a small squeak of excitement. It’s strangled, in a way, as if she was trying to clamp down on it but didn’t have enough time.

Bellamy ends up with a mouthful of hair when Clarke shakes her head experimentally. He sputters, but she pays no attention, instead turning her head upside down and watching her hair shield her face. She starts to wildly flip her head about, jumping with the momentum.

A laugh is startled out of Bellamy before he has the chance to process it. “It’s not even done yet,” he tells her in between breaths.

“It doesn’t matter. This is amazing,” Clarke says, panting slightly.

“Just–let me clean it up.”

Clarke runs her hands through her hair, fingering the jagged edges. “Alright,” she says, as if she was the one doing him a favour. She sits back down, leg jittering with excitement as Bellamy straightens the edges.

After a few minutes of silent cutting, the silence around them seems to be too much for Clarke.

“Tell me a story,” she says, leaning her head slightly to one side.

Bellamy gently takes her head in his hands, tilting it until it’s straight up. “What kind?”

“Anything.”

Bellamy hasn’t told a story in a long time, not since Octavia had grown up. When had that been? It felt like just yesterday she was begging him for the explanations of constellations. He ran through the stories he had memorised as a child, hours of thumbing through the one book of myths their mother had been able to afford before she passed.

“There’s the tale of Hades and Persephone,” Bellamy offers, sectioning Clarke’s hair.

“That one’s messed up. Hades rapes Persephone, right?”

“That’s one version. Mine is a bit different.” Bellamy clears his throat and goes into what Octavia called his  _ ‘Serious Story Voice’. _ The words come naturally to him, like a singing a lullaby he’s heard before. 

The story is one he’s told to Octavia many times before. Bellamy tells Clarke about how before Persephone met Hades, she was named Kore. How she found the Underworld and Hades and how she refused to leave. How Hades fell in love with her stubbornness, and how Kore only agreed to go up when Demeter ended up creating winter. How Zeus named her Persephone, The Destroyer, after everything calmed down.

“What did Kore mean?” Clarke asks, when Bellamy is in front of her, working on the hair there.

“Little girl,” he replies.

“That’s a big jump. From little girl to destroyer.”

“Zeus was afraid. And an asshole.” With a final snip, Clarke’s hair was done. What Bellamy once thought was straight hair turned out to be more wavy now that it was shorter. “Done.”

Clarke rushed to her dagger, checking her reflection in the blade. She inspects it with a scrutinizing gaze, quiet. Bellamy was getting antsy, ready to apologise for a bad haircut when Clarke speaks. “I love it,” she says, almost too quiet to hear. It was as if she was too caught up in how it looks to say it any louder.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She turns back to him and her smile threatens to break her face with how big it is. Bellamy finds himself smiling in response, not even bothering to turn it down. Her new short hair keeps falling in her face, no matter how much Clarke pushes it back.

“Can I tie your hair back a bit?” Bellamy asks. “Just so it doesn’t fall in your face.”

“Not all of it, right? I like how it feels on my shoulders.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll do a crown braid, fit for a princess.”

Clarke settles in front of him once again, and Bellamy does a quick and easy crown braid, tying it off with the yellow ribbon. “Turn around for a second, I need to see the front,” Bellamy says.

Clarke spins where she’s sitting, and Bellamy lightly runs his hands over the braid, looking it over to make sure it’s up to his standards. Clarke breathes out, small puff of breath on his face which brings his attention to just how close they are. Clarke’s eyes flick down to his lips. It would be so easy to just lean in and–

“I found the rabbits but those fuckers are fast,” Murphy interrupts. Bellamy and Clarke break away quickly, Bellamy finding himself suddenly very interested in cleaning up the hair around them.

“Did I interrupt something?” Murphy asks, eyebrow cocked.

“Uh, no, of course not!” Clarke says, slightly pink. “We were just,” she gestures to her head, “cutting my hair.”

“And you didn’t wait for me? Asshole. Not you Clarke, you’re good.”

Clarke smiles at this and Bellamy gives Murphy an unimpressed look. “You got rabbits?” Bellamy says. He really should stop questioning the birds, but that would mean Murphy is right. He would rather choke than admit that.

“Yup,” Murphy says, popping the ‘p’. They’re already skinned, which explains why Murphy took so long.

“Let’s eat, then.”

“Who said anything about you eating?” Murphy sits by the fire, getting the rabbits on spits. “These rabbits are for people who don’t think I’m full of shit, which, I distinctly remember, you do.”

“You’re not serious,” Bellamy says, now with an armful of hair he doesn’t know what to do with. Clarke goes up to him and taps on the hair once, making it all disappear. He raises an eyebrow at her, but she just shrugs.

“Try me, bitch,” Murphy drawls, slowly turning the rabbits. The smell makes Bellamy’s stomach grumble. 

Clarke has been watching their back and forth, obviously torn. “Will you give him some if he takes it back?” Clarke asks, sitting beside Murphy.

“The great Bellamy Blake, admitting he’s wrong? Like that’ll ever happen,” Murphy replies.

“But would you?”

There’s silence as Murphy contemplates this. “Throw in an apology and some grovelling and I’ll consider it.”

Clarke turns back to Bellamy, a hopeful expression on her face. She makes a small  _ go on _ gesture with her head.

Bellamy forces out a breath, gritting his teeth. “I’m sorry I called you full of shit. I should have known that you can talk to birds in the dumbest way possible. I was wrong,” he says, monotonous.

Murphy raises an eyebrow. “That was a really shitty apology. Not enough grovelling, if you ask me.” Murphy sees Clarke give him a look which says  _ play nice.  _ He lets out a long, suffering sigh. “But, since that’s the best I’ll ever get, you can have the smallest rabbit.”

“Thanks,” Bellamy mutters, almost inaudible.

“I’m sorry, I didn't quite catch that.”

“Sucks to be you, then,” Bellamy says, louder.

Clarke laughs at their banter, settling in.

They eat and make plans for their trip to Arcadia, Clarke passing an orb of light between her fingers.

“We should practice combat spells,” Murphy suggests. Clarke agrees and they go to setting targets up from bits of wood they find scattered about.

Bellamy watches as Clarke closes her eyes, scrunching up her nose in concentration. Purple fire bursts from her hands, snaking up her arms and stopping just below her elbows. She jumps giddily, catching Bellamy’s eye and pointing at her arms. “I did it!” She crows, shaking from side to side.

“What is that?” Bellamy asks, wary.

“Mage fire!”

“Let’s see if you can hit something,” he says, holding her shoulders and directing her to her first target

Her arm reels back, as if she was throwing something. She flings her arm hard, sending a ball of purple fire hurling forward. It misses the target, going wide and setting a nearby tree on fire.

“Oh no,” Clarke says, rushing forward. Murphy gets there first, frantically hitting the tree with a shirt.

Murphy turns to them, panting. “Maybe try not to burn down the forest.”

“Sorry,” Clarke says, contrite.

“It’s fine,” Bellamy assures her, “let’s just start with smaller bursts.”

Clarke nods and faces the target. She sends another shot, this time much smaller. Too small. It hits the ground in front of them and sputters out, small and pathetic.

“Maybe–”

“A bit more forceful. I got it,” Clarke finishes, already winding up for another throw. The next shot is bigger, about the size of a fist. It soars through the air, still missing the intended target by a long shot. Clarke lets out a groan of frustration while Murphy stamps out the flames.

“Again,” she says, and sends another shot.

This goes on for about twenty minutes, with Clarke missing the target each time.

“Why can’t I hit it?” Clarke huffed, slumping down. Murphy was leaning against a tree, taking a nap. Putting out fires seems to exhaust him.

“Your stance,” Bellamy says, tugging her back up. He nudges one of Clarke’s feet in front of the other, settling his hands on her hips to twist her torso until her shoulder faces the target. He can feel the warmth coming from her back. For a second he’s slightly thrown by how close they are. He tries to ignore it, instead taking Clarke’s elbow and bending it up at a right angle. “If you stand like this you have a better chance at hitting the target. Also try not to swing your arm too much–just bend your elbow, like this, then straighten your arm.” He demonstrates on his own, bending his arm then straightening it quickly, as if throwing a knife. 

Clarke nods determinedly, and Bellamy steps back, not wanting to get set on fire.

She takes a deep breath in, settling into the stance Bellamy taught her. She positions her arm, then releases.

She hits the target.

Clarke lets out a whoop of victory, arms in the air. She goes to hug Bellamy but stops abruptly at the sight of mage fire on her arms. She shakes it away quickly before throwing her arms around Bellamy, standing on her tiptoes. Bellamy stands still for a moment, shocked. Clarke starts to pull away, but before she can get very far Bellamy wraps his arms around her waist, pulling her back in. 

“I did it,” she says, happy and breathless.

“Good job,” Bellamy says, his reply slightly muffled by her hair.

Clarke eventually steps back, but her hands are still on his shoulders. “Why didn’t you tell me about my stance earlier?”

“I thought it was a magic thing.” Clarke rolls her eyes, a lot smoother than before.

“It wasn’t. It was a me thing.”

Bellamy smiles fondly at her, tucking a stray piece of hair behind her ear.

“Come on. Let’s see if you can hit the center this time.”

\--

After two hours of practice (and accidentally waking Murphy up with a blast above his head) Clarke was able to hit the targets more or less in the middle. Her aim was getting better and she could control how big each shot was with ease.

When Clarke’s eyes started to droop Bellamy suggested they went to bed. It was getting late and they needed to be up early for their trek into Arcadia. As Bellamy gets his bedroll out, he realises Clarke probably doesn’t have one. 

“It’s fine,” Clarke says, seeing Bellamy’s obvious worry. “I can sleep on the floor.”

“Sounds good to me,” Murphy says, curling up.

“You’re such an ass, Murphy,” Bellamy says, lightly kicking at Murphy’s legs.

“Takes one to know one.”

Bellamy ignores him, instead turning to Clarke, offering his bedroll. “Take mine.”

“It’s fine, really. It’s like my tower.”

“You slept on the floor?”

Clarke shrugs, nonplussed. “At least it was solid.”

Bellamy stares at, stunned. “Clarke, that’s not a perk. That’s a requirement.”

Clarke settles onto the ground, using her satchel as a pillow. “I like the feeling of the grass anyway. It’s been a while since I slept outside.”

Bellamy purses his lips, still not entirely comfortable with the idea. “You can use my blanket.”

“No thanks, I get hot easily.”

Bellamy reluctantly puts his head down to sleep, pulling the blanket over his shoulders. “You’re sure?”

“Bellamy for the last time,  _ yes. _ ” Clarke says, exasperated.

“Just… just wake me up if you need anything.”

“Good  _ night,  _ Bellamy.”

“Night, Clarke.”

\--

A soft rustle wakes Bellamy up.

“Clarke?” He says, voice husky with sleep.

Clarke’s voice shushes him softly, her hand gently pushing back his hair. “Go back to sleep.”

She settles with her back against his arm. It takes a second for Bellamy’s brain to register that she’s shivering. He thinks about ignoring it and going back to sleep but his mind won’t let him. It keeps drifting back to Clarke.

In one quick movement, he kicks the blanket off of himself, making it land on Clarke. He aims a little high, and it covers her head entirely. Before she can get out, he’s back to pretending he’s asleep.

Bellamy hears Clarke turn around, then the edges of the blanket are slowly being dragged over his body.

“Too hot,” Bellamy groans, batting it away. 

“Oh,” Clarke whispers, the blanket stilling. After another second, it retreats from his body. When Bellamy is sure that Clarke’s not looking at him, he cracks an eye open.

She’s lying down, back to him again, except this time the blanket is up to her shoulders.

Bellamy lets out a quiet sigh, discreetly rubbing his arms. Although he runs hotter than most, nights are still cold as fuck. He glances back at Clarke, who is now breathing deep and even, fast asleep. 

Worth it. 

—

Bellamy wakes up, arms still pebbled with goosebumps. He’s still cold, but his chest is up against something solid and warm. 

Slowly, his eyes open to a curtain of blonde hair. Trying to keep his breathing even so he doesn’t wake Clarke, he takes stock of his body. One arm is banded around Clarke’s middle, the other pillowed under his head. His legs are tangled with hers, as if he was trying to get as close as possible. 

Before he can think of the best way to move, Clarke stirs awake. It takes a minute but eventually she sits up. Bellamy lets his arm fall away, turning to his side. When he opens his eyes properly, he’s met with Murphy, whittling a large stick and grinning at him slyly. 

Bellamy glares back. It’s way too early for this shit. 

“Morning,” Clarke croaks, voice still rough from sleep. 

“Good morning, Clarke! Did you sleep well?” Murphy asks, way too jovial for Bellamy’s liking. 

“Um, yeah?” Clarke says, sounding confused at what has Murphy this chipper. 

“How about you, Bellamy?” Murphy lightly kicks him in the side. “Were you comfortable?” 

“Fuck off, Murphy.”

“Touchy.”

They pack up, Bellamy steadfastly ignoring all the nudges and looks Murphy was giving him. Clarke doesn’t say anything about last night, so Bellamy doesn’t either. 

Bellamy pulls out the map again, using his compass to help orient himself. “It’ll take about two hours to get to Arcadia and then another thirty minutes to get to Puffs of Magic,” he says, pointing at each place as he says it. 

Clarke tilts her head. “Puffs of Magic?”

“Oh shit, I love that place! Jasper has the best weed,” Murphy says, looking up from where he’s carving designs into the stick he was whittling. 

“They’re the people who can help us find the bean, right?” Clarke asks, looking at Bellamy. 

“Yeah, Monty–he helps run the place–is really good with plants. If anyone can help us find a magic bean, it’s him.”

\--

Arcadia is abuzz with life, vendors calling and selling, children running amok. Clarke’s eyes light up when she sees the entrance, widening as if she was trying to take as much of it in as possible.

Bellamy scopes out the walls, noticing a few guards milling about. Avoiding them will be easy since they don’t seem to be very vigilant. He notices Murphy doing the same, fingers slowly closing into a fist as he counts them.

“You ready?” Bellamy asks Clarke. It’s been a while since she’s been in a town and the last thing Bellamy wants is for her to be overwhelmed.

Clarke smiles back at him, taking his hand and squeezing it without hesitation. “I’m ready.”

“Before we go,” Murphy says, getting their attention, “I have something for you.” Murphy pulls out the stick he was whittling, although it’s more like a staff now. The handle is a dip in the middle, framed by a lattice carving which branches out into a spiral, twisting along the entire thing. One end is sharp, like a spear.

Clarke takes it from him, fingers tracing over the whirls. She swings it once, testing the weight of it. “What’s this for?” Clarke asks, holding the staff so the sharp end is pointing down. It comes up to her chin, and if you ignore the point it just looks like a walking stick.

Murphy’s hand comes up to rub his neck. “People are assholes, and I figured that you needed something to–you know–protect yourself. If your magic fails or whatever. Brute force is stronger than any spell.”

“What about my dagger?”

Murphy shrugs. “You can never have too many weapons.”

Clarke smiles. “Thanks.”

“Yeah–don’t mention it.”

Clarke laughs at that, .

“No, like, seriously,” Murphy intones, “I have a reputation.”

Clarke ignores his pleas. “Come on.”

She grabs Bellamy’s hand, her small one fitting nicely in his. She all but drags him down there, leaving Murphy to trail behind them. Just as the guards pass, they slip into town. 

Murphy spares a quick glance over his shoulder, making sure the guards didn’t catch sight of them. “Okay, so, I need to run some errands. Meet me at Puffs’ at…” He looks up at the sun where it’s lazily making its way across the sky. “...two o’clock.”

“Why are you looking at the sun?” Clarke asks, brows furrowing. “There’s a clock right there.” She points up at the clock tower, its hands ticking slowly.

“Because he’s pretentious,” Bellamy says.

“I’m not pretentious, I’m resourceful.” Before Bellamy can retort, Murphy shoots a quick goodbye and saunters away into a nearby alley.

Bellamy looks around, feeling slightly antsy. Towns have never been his thing–too many people, too many things to watch out for. He can do this, though. Just watch out for Clarke and don’t get caught. “So what do you–Clarke?”

Clarke isn’t by his side. Bellamy tip toes, trying to see over heads and carts. “Excuse me,” he mutters, pushing past people, the streets thick with people doing their morning shopping. “Clarke?” He calls. “Clarke?”

“I’m over–” her response is cut off by a sharp gasp as a cart runs right past her, narrowly missing her feet. She steps back, only to hard bump into a man behind her. Before she can run into any more trouble, Bellamy reaches her. He grabs her arm, tugging her into his chest so he can safely maneuver them to the side of the street. 

“Are you okay?” He asks, checking her for injuries.

“Yeah I–I’m fine. Were carts always that fast?”

“Only if you’re too slow to avoid them,” Bellamy says, relief loosening the tightness in his chest. “Just–stick with me, alright?” 

Clarke nods, her head craning to see past Bellamy. He turns to see what she’s looking at, following her eyeline to a stall selling sweet bread.

Bellamy pats his pockets, feeling for coins. “You hungry?” He asks, holding up the money.

“We don’t have to–”

“Come on, I don’t steal for nothing.” Bellamy tugs her along, not leaving any room in his response for argument. It’s just bread, and if he runs out of money he can just take some from a cocky merchant. There’s no losing here.

Well, except for the merchant.

As they walk, Clarke keeps a loose grip on Bellamy’s shirt. Slowly, it slips down to his hand. Their knuckles brush for a moment before Bellamy decides to just take it. He makes sure to keep his hold loose, however, so she can pull away at any time. She doesn’t, though, just tightens her fingers.

They arrive at the stall without incident and buy two rolls, as well as an extra loaf for travelling. Bellamy turns to Clarke, who is about to bite into her roll with abandon. “Wait, be careful, it’s–”

“Ah!” Clarke squawks, fanning her mouth. She screws up her eyes and chews forcefully, swallowing it as quickly as possible.

“It’s hot,” Bellamy finishes.

“Yeah, I figured.” She blows on the next bite before popping in her mouth. “It’s good, though.”

Bellamy eats his quickly while Clarke seems to savour hers more. Once she’s finished the last of her roll, she dusts her hands off on her clothes. There are crumbs on her face, just at the corner of her mouth.

“You have… “ Bellamy’s words trail off as he gestures to his own face where they would be mirrored. 

Clarke rubs at her cheek, just missing them.

“No it’s a little high–just–here.” Bellamy steps forward into Clarke’s space, thumb coming up to dust the crumbs away. Clarke’s breathing stutters, eyes wide. Bellamy thinks he made a mistake, got too close when her hand comes up to grab at Bellamy’s waist, holding him there. 

Bellamy’s thumb is still moving, delicately stroking the soft skin there. His eyes quickly flick down to her mouth before looking back up into her eyes. 

She’s staring back at him, eyes fluttering over his face. Unconsciously Bellamy darts his tongue out, wetting his bottom lip. Clarke tracks the movement, swaying just a little bit closer. If Bellamy ducked his head down their lips would meet. All the emotions he had been repressing bubble back up, hitting Bellamy with the realisation that he likes Clarke.

Like, a lot. 

Before he can do anything with that realisation, however, a loud bang startles them apart. A quick glance around tells him that a child had just caused a small accident, judging by the adult yelling at them and the rogue produce strewn about.

“Come on,” Bellamy says, voice rougher than usual, “let’s look around.”

Clarke takes to shopping like a fish to water, dragging Bellamy him vendor to vendor, trying everything she sees. Bellamy follows dutifully, making sure she doesn’t get run over and answering questions when needed. 

As they walk through the streets, a bookstore catches Clarke’s attention. She ushers Bellamy inside, running her hand over the spines of the books. She stops suddenly, fingers stilling.

Empty journals are lined up, charcoal arranged neatly beside them. She stares at them longingly, picking up a pack. Turning them over, she sees the price and immediately sets them down. She looks up to see Bellamy watching her.

“Not worth it,” she says, smiling ruefully. 

She goes down another aisle, pulling out a book on herbs to look at. 

Bellamy takes a look at the price himself. It’s steep, but he could afford it. Plus, with all the stealing he does a little gift for a friend should help balance his karma. Making sure Clarke is preoccupied he quickly takes a journal and a set of charcoal, buying it from the woman who runs the shop. He slips the purchases into his bag, turning just as Clarke sidles up to him.

“Ready to go?” Bellamy asks.

“Yeah. I saw this thing, come on.” They walk out together, Clarke steering them to the town square.

She rushes up to a fountain, reaching in to graze the water lightly. She sits on the lip of it, avidly watching the water run. “What is this?” Clarke asks. Bellamy looks around, hoping to see what she’s talking about. Her eyes are still watching the fountain, and it clicks. 

“Wait. Is this the thing you wanted to show me?” Bellamy sits down beside her, leaning on his hand.

“What else is there to show?” Clarke doesn’t wait for an answer, instead powering on. “I didn’t know you could use magic like this. Who’s controlling it? How does it work?”

Bellamy huffs a laugh. “It’s not magic.”

“Well then what is it?”

“It’s… It’s, uh…” Bellamy stumbles. How  _ do  _ fountains work?

“If you don’t know then you can’t tell me it’s not magic.” Bellamy opens his mouth to retort, but can’t think of anything. Clarke smiles triumphantly and Bellamy laughs again, despite himself.

A violin starts playing somewhere, the tune carrying in the breeze. Bellamy spots the musicians a little ways away, nudging Clarke and pointing at them. She takes his hand and they make their way over. Everytime she does that, Bellamy gets a little rush. It was as if he’s doing something he shouldn’t, like he’s getting away with it. He’s still thinking about the implications of not-so-platonic hand holding when they arrive, a small crowd already forming.

The tune is jaunty and fun, the type of music that makes people’s feet tap. Clarke sways to the beat, swinging Bellamy’s hand. She lets go, and Bellamy tries not to feel disappointed by the loss of her warmth. His disappointment is easily forgotten, however, when she steps into the empty space in front of the crowd, her steps light and airy as she danced around the perimeter.

She twists and turns, elegant in a way that’s hard to learn. She looks free and happy, unbound. A small girl runs up to her, clumsily trying to copy her motions. She smiles and laughs, grabbing her hands. They twirl together, the little girl screeching with laughter.

Clarke passes the crowd again and grabs a woman, who grabs a girl, who grabs a man and soon there’s a chain of people, all dancing in delight. It soon becomes a sort of square dance, one Bellamy remembers teaching Octavia to distract her from their mother’s sickness.

Clarke’s eyes pick him out quickly and she beckons him forward. He puts his hands up in a  _ no thanks, I’ll pass  _ gesture. Clarke either misconstrues this or completely ignores it and grabs the closest hand to her, pulling him into the fray.

He laughs nervously, fumbling the first few steps since it’s been a while since he’s done this. Clarke smoothly continues, waiting for him to get his bearings. He quickly gets the hang of it, though, carrying Clarke around what is now a dance floor. She grins up at him, her blue eyes scrunched up with the force of it. They’re standing a bit too close to be considered proper but Bellamy couldn’t care less. His mind is occupied with making sure that he doesn’t trip over his own two feet again and take Clarke down with him. There’s a small part of him that’s internally questioning everything he does but he drowns it out, instead focusing on how perfectly Clarke moves with him.

He has to let go of Clarke eventually, switching partners and dancing with a sweet old lady. Each time he switches, he can’t help but search for Clarke, trying to see that familiar golden hair. 

It seems like everytime they’re close someone else takes him by the hands or someone else swings Clarke into their arms. Bellamy manages to dodge a woman who had been eyeing him for a while, weaving through people to get to Clarke who is now dancing alone, twirling towards him.

The practically slam together, Clarke hitting his chest solidly. The music stops then, and they’re left wrapped in each other’s arms. Clarke’s face is pressed against Bellamy’s chest, her arms around his middle. Bellamy can feel his heart rapidly beating and he’s pretty sure it’s not just from the dancing.

Eventually, Clarke pulls back slightly, tilting her head up to look at Bellamy. She’s a bit breathless, and when she speaks her voice comes out airier than usual.

“We should probably go.”

Bellamy swallows, nodding slightly. “Yeah.” He shakes his head, pulling back until there’s a more respectable distance between them. “Let’s go.”

\--

It only takes about ten minutes to get to Puffs of Magic. Murphy is already waiting outside, wearing new boots that he  _ definitely  _ didn’t have before. It was Murphy, though, so Bellamy couldn’t say he was surprised.

“Took you long enough,” Murphy remarks, holding the door of the shop open.

Clarke shrugs, easy. “I saw a duck.” 

“Understandable.”

The inside of the shop is done built with a light wood, tables with various plants on them strewn about like they’d been dragged in haphazardly. There were windows on the wall facing the street but they were either boarded up or covered by plants pressed against the panes, depriving the shop of natural daylight.

Lanterns hang from thin chains on the ceiling, swaying slightly. The air is humid and hot, and it smells of weed and earth.

“Jasper? Monty?” Bellamy calls out, nearly tripping on a stray plant root. This place makes him feel claustrophobic, too many plants and not enough… everything else.

Clarke seems to be enjoying it, though, inspecting each plant and humming to herself.

A cloud of smoke appears behind the register. Jasper emerges from the smoke, eyes bloodshot and a lazy smile on his face. He looks around for a second, before staring at them. Bellamy can pinpoint the exact second it registers that they’re actually there since Jasper immediately perks up.

“Hey, hey, hey!” He says, managing to smoothly step over everything littering the ground without even glancing at it. He swayed with each step, a blunt hanging loosely from his fingers. “Murphy, my man.” Jasper clasps Murphy’s hand, bringing him in and patting his back twice. “Bellamy. Sup. Who’s this?” He asks, pointing at Clarke.

“She’s a friend of ours,” Murphy interjects, looping an arm around Clarke. Bellamy kind of feels like pushing his hand off and replacing it with his own. Only kind of, however. Because… you know… feelings.

Yeah, he’s eloquent.

“Oh, a friend!” Jasper exclaims, mouth quirking up on one side. “Jasper,” he says, holding his hand out.

“I’m Clarke,” she says, high fiving his hand. Jasper looks thrown for a second, but he brushes it off quickly. Clarke looks over at Murphy to make sure that was the right interaction and he gives her a big smile and a thumbs up.

“Clarke,” Jasper says, then he furrows his brows. “ _ Clarke.  _ Did you notice your name starts out at the back of the throat then goes to the front of your mouth?  _ Clarke. Clarke.”  _ Jasper wanders off, repeating the name  _ Clarke  _ over and over as he tends to the same three plants over and over. Bellamy wonders how they have a running shop.

“I’m gonna go find Monty, ask about the bean,” Bellamy says, heading for the back.

“Oh, wait,” Clarke says, pulling out her grimoire. “Take this.”

Bellamy’s hands brush hers as he takes it. “Thanks.”

The back of the shop is just as crowded as the front. The only difference is that the tables are pushed against the wall. On the floor sits Monty, two magnifying glasses fashioned into glasses on his face, making his eyes appear huge. He looks a bit like a bug.

“Monty?” Bellamy says, knocking on the door frame.

“Huh? Oh, Bellamy!” Monty smiles warmly, his eyes blinking owlishly behind his frames. He flips the glasses up, standing and shaking Bellamy’s hand. “What brings you here?”

“I need some help with this.” He gestures to the ingredients list, passing it to Monty who squints.

He takes the grimoire carefully, fingers running down the page. “Well this,” Monty says, pointing at  _ moonlight  _ inscribed on the page, “is also a name for a flower. I think I have a picture–give me a second.” He starts to rifle in some drawers, drawing out a small piece of paper with an  _ Aha! _

He hands it to Bellamy who tucks in into the grimoire for Clarke to look at later. “And the magic bean?” Bellamy asks.

“Are you gonna be more specific?”

“Uh, no. I think it just needs to be magic.”

Monty pauses. “I have an enchanted pinto bean?” He says, although it comes out more like a question.

“Why would you enchant a pinto bean?”

“So I can have a shiny pinto plant.”

Bellamy just nods, not following along. Monty opens a tray of seeds, taking out an iridescent pinto bean. Bellamy takes it and puts it on the circle of vines in the grimoire. It glows briefly, telling him it works.

Who would’ve known.

“What do you want in exchange?” Bellamy asks, shutting the grimoire.

Monty thinks for a second before flushing slightly. “You know Nate? Or Miller, I guess. The blacksmith by Mulligan Street?”

“Yeah, he’s a friend. Why?” Miller had been his childhood buddy up until Bellamy left with Octavia when they got caught up with the law. Every now and again Bellamy hangs out in his shop, just to catch up. He’s a bit of an asshole but Bellamy is too, so it works out.

“Can–” Monty breaks off, burying his head in his hands briefly. “Can you see if he… uh… likes men? Or… likes me? Both would be good. Yeah, both.”

Bellamy stops for a second. “Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

“Well, I can tell you right now that he likes men, and if you’re the cute plant guy he’s been talking about I’m pretty sure he likes you, too,” Bellamy says. The last couple of visits he’d been pretty caught up about a guy which matches Monty’s description perfectly.

Now that he thinks about it, it could also be Jasper, but Bellamy is pretty sure that Jasper is straighter than an arrow.

“That’s–for real?”

“For real,” Bellamy confirms. He hopes it works out for them. They would be a cute couple. 

“Cool. That’s–yeah, that’s cool. Okay. So, um, you can keep the bean and the picture, and uh–drop by again when you have the chance,” Monty says, walking with Bellamy back to the front of the shop. 

“Yeah, sure. Thanks again.”

“No problem,” Monty says, genuine. 

Bellamy goes back to the others, managing not to trip on anything on his way there.

“Then, you wanna roll it. Make sure you don’t fold it because that’ll ruin the shape,” Murphy says, Clarke watching seriously. 

“Pack the tip and… ta-da! You now have a joint.” Murphy hands it to Clarke, who carefully turns it in her hands. 

Bellamy clears his throat lightly to get their attention. Clarke smiles while Murphy just salutes. “I got the magic bean,” Bellamy announces, holding it up to show them, “let’s go.”

“Hey, hold on a moment,” Murphy says, getting in front of Bellamy to stop him. “You can’t leave Puffs of Magic without puffing some magic.”

“He’s right,” Clarke chimes in, “it’s practically a crime.”

Bellamy looks from Murphy’s cocked eyebrow to Clarke’s hopeful expression. They  _ did _ accomplish everything they set out to do for today, even more with the information on moonlight. He’s been doing nothing but worrying lately. A break would be good for him.

_ Ah, what the hell. _

“Pass the joint, Murphy,” Bellamy says, grabbing a lighter off a table.

“Fuck yeah!” Murphy whoops. “I knew you were fun.” He hands off the joint to Bellamy who lights it, inhaling deeply and holding it in for a second before slowly exhaling. He puffs it again before passing it to Murphy who does the same.

“Can I try?” Clarke asks.

“You sure? You don’t have to just because we are,” Bellamy says, hoping that they weren’t pressuring her. 

“No, I want to,” Clarke assures him.

Murphy looks to bellamy, then back at Clarke. “Sure, kid. Have at it.”

Clarke takes the joint, holding it lightly between her thumb and forefinger. “How do I..?”

“Put it on the edge of your lips and inhale,” Bellamy says, leaning back and feeling a light buzz.

Clarke puts the joint to her lips, inhaling deeply. She immediately starts coughing, passing the joint to Murphy. Bellamy pats her on the back, taking some water and offering it to her. She eagerly drinks it, her coughs now less violent.

“I did not expect that,” she wheezes between coughs.

“Sorry,” Bellamy says, still rubbing her back, “I forgot.”

Murphy holds up the joint. “Wanna try again?”

“Maybe next time,” Clarke says, breathing returning back to normal.

“More for me.”

They stayed and smoked the joint, talking nonsensically. Although Clarke wasn’t that high she seemed to be having a good time. She tried smoking the joint two more times. On the second try she was able to keep the smoke down for longer, exhaling rougly.

Bellamy felt… light. If he jumped right now he would probably just keep rising. That seemed plausible.

Clarke was sitting next to him on the floor, shoulder pressed close to his. It was warm. Like really warm. Is it possible that she’s too warm? Bellamy presses a hand to her forehead, or at least tries to. He actually ends up squishing her face, which isn’t a bad thing.

“Bell–Bellamy,” Clarke says, “What–that’s my  _ nose _ –what are you doing?”

“You. Your face. It’s too hot.”

Clarke’s expression turned offended. “No it’s not. It’s perfect.” She squishes her face between her hands, her lips puckering.

“Clarke, your face is… pretty good,” Murphy drawls from where he’s sitting across from them, “but mine? Mine is the best.”

“He’s right,” Clarke says, downhearted. “I can never reach that level of perfection.”

Murphy nods, agreeing. Bellamy thinks they’re wrong. Clarke is  _ really  _ perfect. With her adorable nose and perfect eyebrows. He tries to vocalise this but ends up just staring with his mouth open. Eventually he closes it, feeling like he forgot something. 

“I’m gonna go find Jasper,” Murphy declares, swaying his way to his feet like a snake if snakes could stand up. Can snakes stand up? That would be terrifying.

Clarke pokes Bellamy’s face, trying to get his attention. Bellamy turns his head to face her which is a mistake since she just keeps poking him, narrowly missing his eye. He takes her hand in his, holding it to his chest to stop her. 

“Bellamy. Bellamy, hey. Hey, Bellamy,” Clarke whispers, making Bellamy lean closer to hear her.

“What?” Bellamy asks, so close their noses are practically brushing.

“Your freckles. They’re like stars.”

It takes a second for this to process. “They’re what?”

“Like stars. I’m pretty sure I see constellations.”

“They’re not stars. They have to glow to be stars. They just–”

“I love them,” Clarke interrupts, cutting him off. She tugs her hand from his, placing it on the side of his face, holding it steady. Bellamy leans forward so his forehead rests on hers. Clarke sighs contentedly, scooting closer. 

“I like your eyes,” Bellamy says, more breathy than he intended. “And your hair. It’s like the sun.”

“I’m gonna give you a sunburn,” Clarke mumbles back, moving her head to rest in the crook of his neck.

“No, you’re not. My skin is too dark for that.” Bellamy rearranges his arms so one is behind Clarke and the other wraps over her in a loose grip.

They sit like that, slowly coming down from their high.

\--

As the buzz slowly leaves them, hunger settles in. They decide to find a tavern to eat at to preserve their supplies and also because Clarke hasn’t been to one yet.

By the time they arrive the sun was setting, washing the sky in a flurry of oranges, pinks and purples. They picked one of Murphy’s old haunts, somewhere where the Royal Guard deem beneath them to visit. 

“The Snuggly Duckling?” Clarke says, raising an eyebrow at Murphy.

Murphy just shakes his head. “Don’t question it.”

The heavy door swings open, revealing a sticky floor and obviously drunk patrons.

They go in, hungry from earlier, and make their way to the bar. Bellamy’s hand is on the small of Clarke’s back, guiding her lightly. Just as they reach the bar, Clarke is yanked away from him.

A middle-aged man is grabbing her arm, mouth tilted towards her ear. “Sit in my lap, doll,” he says, yellow teeth gleaming in the dim light, “I’ll show you a good time.”

Bellamy sees red. “Back off–”

Before he can say anything more, Clarke has the stick Murphy gave her in her hands. She uses the blunt end to jab him hard in the stomach before bringing it up and hitting him square in the jaw. He staggers back, howling in pain and clutching his face.

“You bitch!” He growls. Another man–a friend, Bellamy assumes–swings a lute up, aiming for Clarke. Before he brings it down, however, Murphy appears behind him, snatching it from his hands and kicking his knees to force him to the ground. Murphy starts playing a fast paced tune, getting up on the bar and strumming wildly.

Bellamy goes back to back with Clarke, making sure no one sneaks up on her. A man with a face tattoo rushes at them with his arms outstretched. He’s drunk, sloppy, probably just looking for something to unleash his anger on. 

Bar fights. Now  _ this  _ Bellamy can do.

Bellamy takes one of the arms and twists it behind his back, slamming his face on the edge of the bar. He chances a look back at Clarke who has just thrown a blast of magic into the middle aged man’s stomach. He staggers back, but not before throwing a mug that Clarke isn’t able to dodge. It hits her in the cheek and she reels back slightly before regaining her balance.

Murphy kicks the middle aged man hard in the head, sending him down. “These are new shoes, too,” he mumbles to himself. 

More people are getting up, rearing for a fight. Bellamy has his fists up, ready to knock someone out when he hears a  _ whoosh.  _

Purple mage fire erupts on Clarke’s arms, brighter than he’s ever seen. Immediately, all action stops. Murphy plays one last twangy note before muting the strings.

“Anyone who wants to come at me or my friends is getting hit with this,” Clarke says, her voice ringing out across the tavern. She punctuates her sentence with a raised fist. Slowly, everyone except the middle-aged man, his friend, and the man with the face tattoo go back to eating. 

“When did you learn to play the lute?” Bellamy asks Murphy, panting slightly.

“My past is a mystery.”

Clarke, Murphy and Bellamy sit back down at the bar, ignoring the wary eyes on them. Clarke extinguishes her mage fire, head down.

“Clarke?” Bellamy says, tentative. “You okay?”

“That… was so  _ cool, _ ” Clarke grins back, face beaming. “Did you see me? I just knocked that guy out!”

“Hell yeah, you did!” Murphy smiles, putting his hand up for a high-five. Clarke practically  _ slams  _ her hand down onto his, the resounding slap making Bellamy wince. She turns back to Bellamy, shining with pride.

“I couldn't have done it better myself,” Bellamy says, making Clarke flush and duck her head, a pleased smile playing on her lips.

They order food and go to a table in the back since it seemed the least sticky. Bellamy and Clarke sit on one side while Murphy sits on the other.

As they’re eating, Bellamy remembers that Clarke got hit. A flare of worry bubbles in his stomach.

“Hey, Clarke? Can I see your face real quick?”

Clarke turns to him, a questioning expression on her face. He gently takes her chin in his hand, tilting her face so he can see better. There’s a red mark on her cheek where the mug hit her. It would probably bruise pretty badly in a few days. 

Bellamy lightly brushes his fingers over it, frowning. 

“Here,” Murphy says, tossing Clarke a small container. “Put that on the bruise. It should help.”

“What is it?” Clarke asks, opening and sniffing it.

“Some sort of salve Jasper gave me.”

Clarke nods and tests a swipe of it on her hand. She passes the container to Bellamy. “Can you help me out?”

“Sure.” Bellamy takes the salve, getting a liberal amount on his fingers. He shifts closer to Clarke, holding her face with one hand and rubbing it in with the other.

Slowly, his motions stop and Bellamy is left staring into her eyes. Clarke doesn’t seem to mind, moving a bit closer. Bellamy feels like he’s high again, even though that had been hours ago.

“Does she have something on her face?” Murphy says, louder than necessary. “Just put the damn salve on, Blake.”

Bellamy breaks away, closing the container and tossing it to Murphy who catches it deftly. “I swear to god you’re worse than teenagers,” Murphy mutters under his breath. Clarke turns red and concentrates on her soup. 

Bellamy clears his throat awkwardly, taking out his map.

“So we still need hair of a troll, moonlight and evergreen moss for this spell. I’ve heard that there’s a troll–” Bellamy points to a point on the map labelled  _ Savernake Thicket,  _ “–here. Monty said that moonlight grows in caves–”

“Caves? Again?” Murphy says exasperatedly. “What is up with this spell and caves?”

Bellamy shrugs. “I don't know, the mystery of it? Anyways, I think our best bet is  _ this _ cave, the Lunae Lumen. Evergreen moss grows there so why not moonlight?”

“What about the troll?” Clarke asks.

“Let’s just hope that it likes to hang out nearby. There’s an inn a couple of blocks from here. We can sleep there and set out first thing in the morning.”

“Sounds good to me,” Clarke says, peering over the map.

“Murphy?”

“Yeah, sounds good.”

“It’s settled, then.”

They finish eating and head to the inn, each of them getting their own rooms. As Bellamy goes to sleep that night he’s hit with the realisation that they’re close to finding Octavia, to going their separate ways.

To leaving Clarke.

An aching feeling settles in his chest and he tries not to think about how much he doesn’t want that to happen.

\--

Savernake Thicket is on the other side of Arcadia. To get there it’s a simple matter of hitching rides on the back of carts until they reach the West exit. They stick to the back alleys, avoiding main roads to minimise the possibility of Bellamy and Murphy being caught. 

Savernake Thicket looks like every other forest they’ve been to. Green with lots of trees. Something about this particular one unsettled Bellamy, though. He couldn’t describe it, but there was a prickling sensation on his neck, as if he was being watched.

Murphy was in the front, chirping to birds while Clarke and Bellamy hung back.

“I, uh, I got something for you,” Bellamy says. Clarke looks expectantly at him as he takes the journal and charcoal from his bag, fumbling slightly.

Clarke’s eyes widen, mouth dropping open slightly. “Bellamy–”

“It’s not a big deal, really. They just–you were looking at them, and I thought you might like them. And don’t say it’s too expensive, either, because I already bought them and–”

Clarke cuts off his rambling with a quick kiss to his cheek. Bellamy feels his ears burn and he scratches the back of his neck. 

“I love them. Thank you,” Clarke says, sincere. Bellamy smiles, ducking his head down.

“Yeah, uh, anytime.”

Bellamy can feel his expression turning dopey, something Octavia would endlessly tease him for, but he can’t seem to bring himself to care.

They quicken their pace to catch up with Murphy, matching his strides.

“Tweet? Oh twitty-fuck.” Murphy takes out his daggers, readying for a fight. “Hey guys? We’re gonna have to be on our guard here. Something’s not right.”

Clarke immediately has her staff in her hand, ready to swing. Bellamy reaches for his knife, gritting his teeth in frustration when his hand comes up empty. He left it in the eye of the Hydra.  _ Fuck. _

He feels something cold nudge his hand. Looking down, he sees that it’s Clarke’s dagger. She nudges him again and he takes it, feeling comforted by the familiar weight in his hand.

They continue walking, jumping at every rustle in the bushes. 

With Bellamy’s mind is concentrated on his surroundings, however, he doesn’t see the trap until it has him hoisted him up in the air.

“Bellamy!” Clarke yells. 

He’s tangled up in a net about three meters high, his stomach facing the ground. He tries to flip over so he’s on his back but just manages to tangle himself up more.

“I’m fine!” Bellamy calls down, taking his knife out. “Just… struggling.”

“Duck!” Murphy says. Bellamy’s view is mostly obscured but he can see Murphy throwing his knife. There’s a soft  _ thump  _ afterward, like a body hitting the ground.

Clarke has her staff in her hands again, mage fire running up her arms. Somehow, the staff doesn’t catch. Bellamy makes a mental note to ask her about it later.

His arm is folded underneath him, dagger still gripped tight. If only he could get his arm loose, he could cut through the rope. Bellamy tries to push himself up but the net has too much slack. He ends up just wiggling like a worm.

He quickly resigns himself to just try and watch Murphy and Clarke through the holes in the net. They’re back to back, swinging and shooting magic periodically. 

“What the fuck are these things?” Murphy asks in between kicks.

“Goblins,” Clarke grits out, sending one flying. 

Bellamy sees one of them leap and he opens his mouth to warn them but finds that no sound comes out. It takes a second for him to realise that his mouth didn’t even open.

_ What the fuck is going on? _

That’s when he notices a tingling sensation on his entire body, as if the air around him was vibrating. He could still move his eyes although with the way he was situated all he could really see was the ground.  _ Maybe _ his fringe if he strained hard enough.

The net starts to sway, then it dips in the air before stopping abruptly, as if something caught it. Something pulls him into the trees, quickly and quietly. The net falls away and four pairs of hands are grabbing him, moving through the canopy.

He tries to scream for Clarke or even Murphy, but he’s still paralyzed.

He watches, still and silent, as these things take him away.

\--

Clarke felt a sense of wrongness the moment she set foot in Savernake Thicket. Something in the trees makes her feel unsettled, antsy.

When Murphy told them that they had to be careful it didn’t come as much of a surprise, but it was still nice to have confirmation. She shifts the grip on her staff, ready to swing if something came out of the bushes.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Bellamy reach in his pocket, only to curse silently when his hand comes out empty. Without thinking, Clarke takes out her dagger and nudges him with it, silently telling him to take it. He gives her a nod in thanks, smiling. She smiles back, feeling her stomach swoop slightly.

_ So _ not the time.

They keep moving, Clarke’s head swivelling with each noise. 

Between one breath and the next, Bellamy is up in the air, tangled in a net.

“Bellamy!” Clarke yells, not even realising she was the one who said it until the word was out of her mouth.

“I’m fine!” He yells back, trying and failing to move in the net. “Just… struggling.”

Before Clarke can respond, something jumps out from the shadows. “Duck!” Murphy shouts, and Clarke is immediately on the ground. She hears the faint whizz of a knife and then a body hitting the ground. 

Trying not to waste any time, Clarke is back on her feet. She checks behind her and sees Murphy with his back to her, his other knife at the ready. 

Clarke calls on her mage fire, the familiar warmth soothing. She had already enchanted the staff to be resistant to it, so she could fight with both at the same time. Looking around them, she realises what they’re fighting.

Goblins.

They’re  _ everywhere  _ now, surrounding her and Murphy.

Clarke remembers reading about them in her lessons, the witch breathing down her neck. They only come up to her about her waist, sickly grey in colour with bat-like ears. Cracks run through their skin like stone. The goblins peer at them with beady eyes, unblinking.

For a second they just stare, not one of them moving.

Then, as if all of them were a hive mind, they attack.

Immediately, Clarke sends out a blast of mage fire, big and unrestrained. It toasts the first line of goblins, but there are more behind them. She keeps shooting out mage fire, swinging her staff if they get too close. 

“What the fuck are these?” Murphy asks. Clarke spares a glance his way and sees him primarily kicking them in the face, only using his dagger when necessary.

“Goblins,” she breathes out, hitting one square in the face.  _ Why are there so  _ many _? _

There are about fifteen goblins Clarke can see, all of them rushing towards her. Clarke jumps up and brings her staff down, mage fire spreading in a semicircle. Before she can even catch her breath a goblin jumps on her back and stays there. She twists her arm back, grabbing it and dislodging it, flinging it towards the woods.

She quickly braces herself for another hit, but it doesn’t come. The goblins disperse, disappearing as quickly as they had come.

“Bellamy, are you okay?” Clarke calls out, still scanning her surroundings in case they come back. “Bell–” Her words cut off as she looks up. Bellamy isn’t there. Worry rises in her chest, her heartbeat quickening.

Murphy staggers toward Clarke, a new bruise forming on his face. “What is it?” Clarke points up and Murphy follows the path with his eyes. 

“Oh, fuck,” he breathes.

“Bellamy!” She calls into the woods, completely ignoring the fact that they aren’t alone. Clarke catches herself before she can do it again, taking a few deep breaths. Panic doesn’t help anyone. If he didn’t answer the first time, he probably won’t answer the second. She wracks her brain for any information about goblins. In a distant corner of her memory, something comes to mind.

“The goblins. They must’ve taken Bellamy. They were probably distracting us and while we fought them–”

“They grabbed Bellamy. That’s why they left so fast,” Murphy finishes.

“Exactly.”

Murphy’s brow furrows. “Why would they want him, though?”

“Goblins like to torture. It’s fun to them. They also might want to eat him.”

“Eat him?”

“I mean, they  _ are _ carnivores.” Clarke takes another deep breath to calm her nerves, shaking her head. “Let’s just find Bellamy before we find out.”

Murphy nods, grabbing his dagger embedded in the goblin he threw it at.

Clarke keeps her head high and tries to not think about how much it would hurt if they never found him. When they first came into her tower, she was originally just going to use them. She had been in there long enough and would do practically anything to leave.

Then, Bellamy pulled her in. With his lopsided smile and messy curls, she didn’t want to leave. She got attached. This wasn’t her plan, but she’s going to stick with it. 

Clarke Griffin is many things but a quitter isn’t one of them.

\--

It takes about fifteen minutes to figure out that the goblins took Bellamy to the The Lunae Lumen cave and another five to get there. It looks like every other cave, rocky and sad. The biggest difference is that there’s a troll lounging in the entrance.

“This seems too convenient,” Murphy whispers. They’re hiding in a bush, knives out and ready to strike.

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” Clarke says back, peering through the leaves. The troll looks about seven feet tall, green skin sagging around the joints. They have a beautiful head of hair, though, dark and coming to about their hip. 

The troll lazily picks their teeth, looking tired.

“Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do,” Murphy says, drawing a circle in the ground. “You’ll distract the troll with your magic, making it look here. While it’s bent over, I’ll–Clarke? Clarke what are you–”

Clarke had left the bushes, trying to stroll confidently to the troll. Plans take too much time. She needed to be direct. If things became aggressive, she had her mage fire. It’s fine. Everything will be fine. 

Hopefully.

From what Clarke had read, trolls could be reasoned with. Clarke ignores Murphy’s increasingly urgent calls, stopping right in front of the troll.

They peers down at her, waiting for her to speak. 

“Um, hi,” Clarke says, waving a little. “Can I have some of your hair?”

The troll blinks. “Why?” Their voice is gravelly and rough, as if there were rocks in their vocal cords.

“For a location spell.”

The troll looks at Clarke, thinking. After a tense moment, they shrugs and pluck a hair from their head, giving it to Clarke.

“Thank you,” Clarke says, looking back at Murphy whose mouth is hanging open. She shoots him a thumbs up before turning back to the troll. “Also, are there any goblins in this cave?”

“On the lower floors,” they grumbles, clearly done with the conversation.

“Cool, thanks.” Clarke turns to Murphy, cocking her head to the cave entrance. She slips in, stowing the hair away into her satchel. She hears Murphy give the troll a quick hello which is met with a grunt.

He’s slightly panting by the time he reaches Clarke. “How did you know that was going to work?”

Clarke shrugs. “I didn’t.”

Murphy nods to himself, looking as if he’s rethinking his life choices. “You, Clarke Griffin, have major balls.”

What does that even mean? “Thanks?”

Murphy waves a hand. “I’ll explain it later. Come on.”

They find a tunnel with small footprints going down and take it to the lower levels, Clarke holding up some light as they go down. Clarke can hear voices speaking, several gravelly ones and one deep pissed off one. The closer they get, the clearer the voices become. She hopes it’s Bellamy. 

Clarke hears the goblins say something, followed by a scoff. “What are you gonna do you shrivelled up ballsack?” There’s a smack and a grunt of pain shortly after.

It’s definitely Bellamy.

The tunnel opens up, revealing a cavern. A fire on the ground casts an orange light, unnaturally bright. Clarke knows that goblins could use magic but she doesn’t know to what extent. Hopefully they don’t know mage fire.

Stalactites hang down from the ceiling, looking as if they’ll fall at any moment. In the middle of it all there’s Bellamy, hanging down with everything else, a rope wrapped around his middle. His body is horizontal, turning slowly. There were new bruises on his face, and Clarke feels such an immense rush of relief at the fact that he is alive. A little harmed but still alive.

The goblins were watching him disinterestedly, bored. They were talking amongst themselves, gesturing.

Clarke extinguishes her light, looking to Murphy who’s surveying the scene.

“Got any ideas?” Clarke asks in hushed tones.

Murphy nods. “Yeah. Stay put.”

\--

Bellamy glares at the goblins, head turning to compensate as he turns slowly in a circle. The rope digs into his skin and his neck aches with the effort to hold his head up. After he was taken from the net, the goblins took him to this cave, hanging him up and kicking him once every so often, laughing when he grunts in pain.

He may have also been antagonizing them, but that’s up for debate in Bellamy’s opinion.

When he turns back around, the goblins have taken to ignoring him, instead talking to each other in an unfamiliar tongue. Bellamy sighs and sags, gazing unblinkingly at the far wall. Now that there was nothing to really  _ do,  _ he was pretty much hopeless.

He was thinking about ways to get to the dagger Clarke gave him when he hears horrible lute playing.

Like,  _ really bad. _

“Murphy?” Bellamy says, voice gruff. His volume was barely above a whisper, but the emptiness of the cave carries the sound. 

Bellamy starts to laugh. The full-body seizure kind. He can’t help it, it’s just so  _ insane _ . He was kidnapped by fucking  _ goblins  _ and his arch-nemesis is saving him with a lute and a girl they found in a tower.

His life is so fucked up.

The goblins stare at Bellamy in confusion as he struggles to breathe, spinning a bit more rapidly now with all his movement.

“You–you guys are so,” he takes in a deep breath, “ _ fucked.” _

One of the goblins rear back to punch him, and Bellamy braces himself for the hit. Before it can come, though, the goblin stops. Murphy is belting out a long, off key note, drawing the attention of every goblin. He has stepped out of the shadows, lute raised above his shoulder ready to strike.

The goblins stare at him. One brave soul starts running, aiming straight for Murphy. The moment he gets into range, Murphy swings his lute, note cutting off. The lute splinters into a million pieces, now nothing more than strings and wood as the goblin soars.

All the other goblins follow its arc through the air, heads pivoting with the movement. The goblin hits the back wall, completely knocked out.

Everything stops. The goblins stare at their fallen brethren, before turning to Murphy, slowly. It somehow becomes a staring contest, Murphy against a bunch of fucking goblins.

A goblin yells, a war cry. Murphy screams back, louder, broken lute still hanging in his hand. It runs forward, and Murphy throws the lute at the goblin with all his might, yelling, “Eat shit, motherfucker!” It ricochets off the goblin’s head with a  _ kathunk.  _

This makes all the other goblins spring into action, gunning for Murphy. He pulls out his daggers and runs towards the heart of the fight, flinging goblins and slitting throats.

Bellamy tries to see what happens next, but he’s turned around, now facing the wall.  _ Goddamnit,  _ he thinks. He wiggles his body again, flailing around to try to get to the front. He  _ really  _ hopes Clarke isn’t here to see him. This is probably the most embarrassing thing she could witness.

Hands steady his movement. A flash of gold hair.  _ Please don’t let it be Clarke, please don’t let it be– _

“Hey Bellamy.”

_ Fuck. _

“Clarke,” Bellamy sighs, resigned to his fate of never looking competent in front of her. 

“I’m gonna get you out,” she says, voice low. 

Bellamy nods, or at least tries to. “Your knife’s in my boot.”

Clarke makes a sound of acknowledgement and spins Bellamy around, stopping him when his feet are closest to her. She grabs the knife, hands hovering for a second as she decides what to do.

Clarke furrows her brow, watching Bellamy slowly turn.

“Okay, so, I’m gonna cut your arms out first,” Clarke says, sawing at the rope. “Then, you can hold yourself up with the rope above you while I cut your legs out.”

“Cool.”

Once he’s free, he stands shakily, the blood rushing to his head. He gives Clarke a smile, and she returns it easily. She hesitates for a moment before hugging him, arms tight. She buries her face in the crook of his neck, letting out a content sigh.

Bellamy stands there for a second, arms frozen, before he hugs her back just as fierce. 

“If I didn’t find you…” Clarke mumbles, words trailing off.

“I know,” Bellamy says back, because he does. Somehow, in the short span of three days Clarke had wormed her way under his skin, becoming something that he doesn’t want to let go of. It’s terrifying, but at the same time Bellamy doesn’t care enough to stop it.

They stand like that for a moment, rocking slightly in place before Clarke pulls away, bright. Bellamy tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear, his other arm still comfortably settled on her waist.

A movement behind Clarke makes Bellamy break eye contact. Murphy is being overwhelmed, three goblins hopping on his back. Murphy runs backwards into a wall, crushing them. His movements are sluggish and slow, only just narrowly avoiding a rock thrown by one of the goblins.

“Come on,” Clarke says, handing Bellamy the knife and taking his hand, pulling him into the fray.

Bellamy reaches Murphy first, kicking a goblin out of the way and burying his knife into another one. He sees purple flashes and turns away from them, watching Clarke’s back. 

The goblins advance on Bellamy, taking him away from the others.  _ They’re trying to pick us off, one by one _ , he thinks.

He sees a goblin do a running jump, straight for Clarke. “Clarke!” He yells, punching a goblin right in the gut. “On your six!”

Without looking, Clarke sends a blast behind her–hitting the goblin right in the chest–and continues fighting. She tries to reach for her staff several times, stopping when it nearly gets her overwhelmed. She gives up, resorting to just using her magic.

Bellamy lands a few more punches when he hears Clarke call out. “Get close to me!”

Bellamy doesn’t even think about it. He tries to punch his way through the goblins but that proves useless, given the fact that they’re shorter and also punch back. He resorts to sort of walking on them, running across them like stepping stones. When he gets close enough he jumps to Clarke, rolling on impact. The goblins were a bit more scared of fighting her, giving her a wide berth as she shoots mage fire.

Murphy arrives a few seconds later, sticking close.

Once she sees that Murphy and Bellamy are by her side, she clasps her hands together in front of her. She raises her arms and brings them down to the ground, hitting it hard. A ring of mage fire blazes around them, moving towards the goblins. The ones who don’t run fast enough burn, turning to ashes. Even though the fire was all around them, it didn’t feel hot. It was the same type of burning you get in the cold, the type that bit.

The goblins retreat, pushing each other into the flames. They all leave through the tunnel Clarke and Murphy came in, the last one doing a series of complicated gestures. The ground in front of the exit rises, sealing the tunnel off and leaving Clarke, Murphy and Bellamy in the cavern.

The moment the tunnel closes Clarke falls to the ground, Bellamy just barely catching her in time. 

“Clarke? Clarke, you okay?” Bellamy says, laying her down. He brushes her hair back from her forehead, feeling her temperature. It feels hot, as if she was running a fever. Her skin is damp with sweat, pale.

“Yeah… just,” Clarke takes in a shaky breath, “just used too much magic. There’s a, uh, potion. In my satchel. It’s green.”

Murphy quickly rummages around while Bellamy stays at her side, holding her hand. It’s cold. Too cold.

“This one?” Murphy says, holding up a small vial with a thick, green liquid inside.

Clarke nods, holding her hand out for the potion. She uncaps it and downs it in one go, coughing harshly. Bellamy rubs her back, sharing a worried look with Murphy.

“You good?” Murphy asks, offering her some water.

Clarke takes a generous gulp, breathing heavily. A full body shiver wracks her frame for a second before she exhales roughly. “I’m good.”

She stands, Bellamy standing with her to make sure she doesn’t fall. Bellamy checks her over one more time. She’s regained some colour in her cheeks and she isn’t shaking anymore. Apart from a couple of bruises, she seems fine now. “Thanks for letting me borrow your knife,” Bellamy says, handing it back to her.

“You can keep it,” she says, trying to push it back into his hand.

“Nah, Octavia’s got mine. Don’t wanna be loaded down.”

Clarke obviously wants to push it, but she relents. Sensing he won’t back down, she pockets the knife.

Murphy sighs and gets up, cracking his neck. He walks over to the sealed off tunnel, running his hands over it. “What do we do now?”

Bellamy shrugs. “I guess we just… pick another tunnel and hope we don’t die.”

“Sounds good to me,” Clarke says, grabbing Bellamy’s hand. She pulls him towards the first tunnel she sees, Murphy following behind.

They start walking, keeping to the left. Hopefully it will take them into a more familiar part of the cave.

After thirty minutes of walking, hope seems like it's the only thing keeping Bellamy from stabbing Murphy.

“That rock looks awfully familiar,” Murphy says, pointing at the floor.

“All these rocks are familiar,” Bellamy huffs out, “we’re in a cave.”

“This rock has writing, though.”

“What?” Bellamy whips around, doubling back. He pushes Murphy aside, kneeling in front of the rock. “Why didn’t you say anything the first time you saw it?”

Murphy shrugs. “I thought I was hallucinating.”

Clarke nudges her way between them, holding her light so Bellamy could see. “What does it say?”

“ _ Per viam amoris osculum A lumine _ ,” Bellamy reads, tongue curling around the Latin. “A kiss of love lights the way.”

“What does that even mean?” Clarke says exasperatedly. 

Murphy furrows his brows, before turning to Bellamy. “Blake, gimme some sugar.”

Bellamy reels back a bit. “Wha–” Before he could finish his half formed question, Murphy had planted a dry peck on his mouth.

Bellamy sputters, wiping his lips on his sleeve. Murphy looks vaguely disappointed.

“Well, that did nothing,” Murphy says. He tilts his head, considering. “I mean, there also wasn’t a lot of love, so that was probably an unfair test.”

Bellamy glares while Murphy just stares back cooly, unperturbed. “Welp, I’ve done everything I could,” he says, standing and leaning against the cave wall.

“You’re not gonna kiss Clarke?” Bellamy asks, stomach turning slightly at the thought of it.

Murphy raises an eyebrow. “Do you  _ want  _ me to kiss Clarke?”

Bellamy clenches his jaw and looks away, scratching the back of his neck.

“Plus, she’s like my child,” Murphy reasons. “It would be weird.”

Clarke scuffs her toe on the ground. Bellamy softens when he looks at her, almost deflating.

“So,” she says, “it’s just us now.”

Bellamy gets up, taking a step closer to her. “We don’t have to, you know. We could always just punch our way out.”

His weak joke makes her laugh, lighting up her face.

“I want to. I think… I think I’ve wanted to for a while.” She breathes the last part out, quick and light.

Bellamy feels like he stops breathing, his face stretching out into a smile. He takes another step closer, settling his hands on her hips. The orb of light moves to float around her, but Bellamy hardly notices. He’s concentrated on Clarke; the way her lashes dust her cheeks, the slight flush to her face from all the walking. “Yeah?” 

“Yeah.”

Slowly, giving her time to pull away, Bellamy’s hand raises to cup her jaw. She leans into it, head tilting up. 

“Ugh, finally,” Murphy mutters, ruining the moment. Bellamy breaks away slightly to flip Murphy off as Clarke laughs quietly, burying her face in Bellamy’s chest.

“Turn around, Murphy,” Bellamy practically orders. 

Murphy rolls his eyes. “Fine,” he concedes, “but I expect details.” He turns away, pulling out his knife and cleaning it.

“I’m so sorry,” Bellamy says, words low, only meant for Clarke.

Clarke lifts her head up from Bellamy’s chest, hand going up to the back of his neck. “Stop talking.”

She pulls him down and Bellamy goes willingly. Finally, their lips meet, warm and soft and  _ perfect.  _ He tries to keep it chaste, revelling in the way her hand tightens in his hair and how her body pushes closer. Clarke’s mouth parts slightly, though, and Bellamy finds it hard to resist teasing her with his tongue, licking lightly at her bottom lip. 

Bellamy would be happy to continue, even forgetting about Murphy, when a bright glow reminds him that  _ they are in a cave and they might die. _

He pulls away from Clarke, pecking her lips lightly when she chases him. She rests her forehead against his, breathing heavier than normal. Slowly, Bellamy opens his eyes. Clarke is awashed in a purple light but it isn’t coming from her orb. He pulls back a little more and looks up.

Purple crystals embedded in the ceiling glow brightly, creating a path.

“Are you two done or will you take a second?” Murphy asks, back still turned.

“We’re done, Murphy,” Clarke says, eyes on Bellamy. Bellamy grins back at her, kissing her quickly. He can do that now. That’s fun.

Murphy gets up, holstering his knife. “So? How was it?”

“It was none of your business,” Bellamy says, lacing his fingers with Clarke.

“Whatever.” Murphy walks ahead, but not before turning to Clarke and mouthing  _ details. _

Bellamy lets Murphy lead the way out, happy to linger behind with Clarke, walking hand in hand.

The path out leads them to another tunnel they must have missed. It’s steep and winding, dusty as if it hadn’t been used in a long time. 

“Guys!” Murphy says, stopping suddenly. “I think I found something!”

Clarke and Bellamy rush to meet him. The tunnel splits, crystals lighting up two pathways. Down one of them, there’s a pool of water, surrounded by a bright green moss. In the pond there are lilies, so white they almost glowed. They look exactly like the picture Monty gave them.

Clarke heads in, grabbing some of the moss and a flower. She opens up her grimoire, putting each ingredient on the page. The circle glows, and she turns and grins at Bellamy and Murphy.

“You ready to find your sister?” She says.

Bellamy lets a relieved chuckle escape his lips. They’re finally going to find Octavia. After all this build up it seemed so anticlimactic. 

Bellamy holds his hand out for Clarke to take and she grabs it, using it to pull herself to her feet. They share a small smile, and Bellamy lets the crystals guide them out of the cave.

\--

Clarke feels like she’s in a dream. Any moment now, she’ll wake up and be back in her tower, doing spells and making potions until her hands shook and bled. Everytime she felt like this, though, she would look at Bellamy’s crooked smile or laugh at one of Murphy’s snide remarks and remember  _ this is real. She can have this. _

She walks out, hand in hand with Bellamy, the sun just disappearing below the horizon.

And then a blast of red mage fire zooms past her.

Without thinking, Clarke pushes Bellamy behind her, firing off three shots in rapid succession, all of them aiming for a figure in a dark cloak. The figure bats them away like flies, not even flinching. 

A knife whizzes past Clarke, aiming straight for the heart of the figure. They send it flying back, making Murphy jump out of the way, rolling on the ground to dodge. He tries to get up but vines pop out of the ground, snaking their way around Murphy. 

“Bondage isn’t kinky if it’s not consensual,” Murphy grinds out, before a vine tightens around his neck, effectively silencing him.

“Murphy!” Clarke calls out. She can’t run to him; she’s still trying to fight off this… this  _ thing.  _ Bellamy goes to him instead. He runs, but something stops him halfway. Bellamy hovers above the ground, clutching at his throat, gasping as if something was choking him.

Clarke tries to get to him–cloaked figure be damned–when she’s stopped. Looking down, she sees vines crawling up her legs. They’re tight, holding her there in a strong grip. She calls on her mage fire, about to burn the vines off when the figure speaks.

“Ah, ah, ah. If you do that I’ll break their necks.”

A chill runs down Clarke’s spine. She can barely hear the witch over the roaring of her own pulse in her ears. Slowly, trying not to make any sudden movements, Clarke puts out her mage fire, bringing her arms back down to her body.

She turns her head and finds herself staring back into the pitch black eyes of the witch.

Clarke stops breathing, her breath hitching in her chest. She knew this was too good to be true. She was caught, and there was nothing she could do. Clarke grits her teeth, forcing herself to take a breath.

“What do you want?” Clarke demands, voice steely and surprisingly steady.

“What I want is quite simple, really,” the witch says, her voice settling like ice in Clarke’s bones. “You come with me–without resisting–and I let them go.”

Clarke wants to scream. She wants to shout and cry and more than anything she wants to burn the witch. She doesn’t, though. Taking in a breath, she asks a question she never dared to before. “Why? Why me?”

The witch laughs, cruelly and without mirth. “You see, Clarke,” Clarke represses a shudder at how her name sounds coming from the witch, “I’m getting a bit on in my years, and I need a strong, healthy body. This one’s run its course, and now…”

Clarke tries to keep her face blank but her eyes betray her shock. “You want mine.”

“Precisely.” The witch smiles, a mockery of the real thing.

“ _ Clarke,”  _ Bellamy chokes out, still scratching at his neck. He can’t say much else, but he doesn’t have to. His eyes are practically screaming  _ don’t. _

Clarke weighs her options. Either she dies, or Bellamy and Murphy die. Two lives for one.

If she won’t live past today, she’s sure as hell going to make sure that Bellamy and Murphy do.

“Fine,” Clarke says, spitting out the word. “You can have it. Under one condition.”

Clarke can see Bellamy start kicking with more force now out of the corner of her eye. She ignores him, turning her head ever so slightly away.

“What makes you think you can bargain?” The witch mocks, tightening the hold on Bellamy. He chokes again, movements turning sporadic.

In a blink, Clarke has her knife pressing against her throat, hard enough to break the skin. The witch reaches out, stopping when she sees that just makes Clarke press a little harder.

“You want me alive, right?” Clarke says, breathing harshly. “Hear me out or I slit my throat.”

The witch’s face twists into a grimace, and reluctantly she takes a small step back.

“Your condition?”

“If I beat you in a fight, you let Bellamy and me go. And Murphy.”

She hears Murphy scoff. “Should I,” he wheezes, still being squeezed tight by the vines, “be offended... I’m an afterthought?”

No one responds to him.

The witch cocks her head. “What makes you think you can beat me?” She practically hisses. “Our magic is bound together. Whatever you can do, I can do. Not to mention the experience I have.”

Clarke gives a wry smile. “If I’m gonna die, might as well die in style, right?”

The witch gives her an assessing gaze, eyes cool and lifeless.

“Fine.”

With a wave of her hand, Bellamy and Murphy are released, coughing up a storm. “ _ Clarke,”  _ Bellamy says, voice hoarse. He scrambles to his feet, staggering over to her.

Just as he’s about to reach her, he smacks into an invisible wall. “ _ Fuck.” _

Clarke whips back to the witch, seething. “What did you do?”

“I created a dome. No outside interference.”

Clarke tries to push down her anger, instead kneeling over to where Bellamy fell. He gets up, putting his hands on the barrier.

“Clarke?” He says, and Clarke  _ hates  _ that she can hear the panic in his voice. “Clarke, please don’t do this. Don’t, we can find another way, there has to be–”

“There is no other way, Bellamy,” Clarke cuts off, putting her hands over his. Bellamy’s face breaks, eyes becoming glassy.

“There  _ has  _ to be, Clarke,” he says, his voice breaking on her name. “I can’t lose you.” The last part of the sentence is nearly lost in a sob. Clarke tries to smile through her tears, putting her forehead on the barrier. He mimics her, staring into her eyes.

God, she loves his eyes.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you find Octavia,” Clarke whispers, tears running freely down her face.

“I’ll find her another way, just–just don’t leave me.”

Clarke feels her heart ache, but she shakes her head, standing up. “Don’t be an ass, Murphy,” she calls out, trying not to get too caught up in Murphy’s scared expression. Before he can reply, she turns, walking to the witch.

She can hear Bellamy yelling, fists pounding on the dome that separates him. She keeps her gaze forward, knowing her resolve will break if she looks back. Suddenly, the pounding stops. Curiosity tears at her, and she allows herself one glance over her shoulder, a sob falling out of her mouth at what she sees.

Murphy is holding Bellamy back as he sobs, knuckles bloody. Murphy isn’t letting much emotion show, but Clarke can see tear tracks on his face, eyes slightly red. Murphy nods at her, understanding.

Clarke squares her shoulders and looks back at the witch, clenching her jaw. The witch is standing in the middle, almost too still.

“We fight until the other can’t go on,” the witch says, “no killing. Deal?” The witch holds her hand out, gnarled and pale, so thin Clarke could count each bone.

Clarke shuts her eyes, running ideas through her mind one last time in case there was something she missed. There wasn’t. So here she was, signing her life away, just like her mother.

Life has a funny way of coming full circle.

“Deal.” 

She grasps the witch’s hand firmly, a cold, blue glow emanating from their forearms. She was bound by her word now.

“Clarke!” Bellamy’s voice cuts through her and she’s looking back before she knows what she’s doing. “ _ Please.”  _ He’s begging, and Clarke feels like she’s choking as she turns her back on him.

Clarke stares into the witch’s soulless eyes, uttering a single word.

“Start.”

Before the witch can do anything, Clarke calls on her mage fire, throwing quick, small blasts, hoping to tire out the witch. She dodges them easily, sending vines to bind Clarke.

Clarke lets out a quick ring of fire, burning the vines before they get to her. She punches the ground, sending a trail of fire to the witch. 

The witch dodges, rolling to the left, but Clarke anticipates it. Her knife is already cutting through the air, finding a home in the witch’s right shoulder.

She screeches, ripping out the knife, flinging it at Clarke so fast that it just barely misses her, Clarke ducking out of the way. She’s on her hands and knees, breathing heavily, head thumping with the overuse of her magic.The witch’s arms light up with her own mage fire, and she starts running to Clarke, unnatural and crooked.

Clarke yells, using what she has left of her magic to try to burn the witch alive with mage fire.

It works, sending the witch into a frenzy. She drops to her knees, clawing at the skin that’s alight. 

It works until it doesn’t, the witch’s screams turning into a maniacal laugh, grating on Clarke’s ears.

“You’re scrappy,” the witch laughs from inside the flames, “I’ll give you that.”

The fire extinguishes, leaving no marks at all. The witch’s hand shoots up, fingers bent. Clarke is lifted off the ground, her air cutting off. She struggles, kicking, grasping her neck and wincing when she accidentally touches the fresh cut there.

The witch grins, slow. “Do you yield?”

Clarke chokes in response.

“I said–” the witch pulls her arm in quickly, bringing Clarke face to face with her, “–do. You. Yield?”

Clarke glares, vision going spotty.

“I yield.”

Immediately, the hold on her is dropped, and Clarke starts gasping for air, writhing on the ground. 

“Did you really think you could beat me?” The witch jeers, walking in a small circle around Clarke. “I am smarter than you’ll ever be. With your body I can take the entire kingdom in a day. Of course, your mother will be a slight problem, but it’s nothing I can’t take care of.”

“My mom?” Clarke says, raspy. “She… she doesn’t care. She traded me.”

The witch cackles. “She might’ve been a  _ tad  _ misguided. That’s what happens when you don’t think your bargains through. Imagine how heartbroken she’ll be when she realises it’s all in vain, and that you hated her anyway.”

Clarke’s mind is going a mile a minute. How could this be true? Her eyes dart around, and they land on Bellamy and Murphy. Bellamy is watching with wide eyes, no longer sobbing, but still crying. His eyes are angry though, furious. Murphy…

Murphy is motioning to his back.

_ Oh. _

Slowly, Clarke inches her hand to her back.

“I mean, how could you have won?” The witch continues, grabbing Clarke and pulling her to her feet. “I have read every grimoire, memorised every spell and made every potion. You are  _ nothing  _ compared to me.”

Clarke forces herself to make unwavering eye contact. “There’s one spell you don’t know, one more powerful than anything you could have read.”

“Aw, and what’s that?” The witch asks, voice chock full of fake emotion. “Love?”

“No.” Clarke wraps her hand around the handle of her staff. “Brute force, bitch!”

Clarke rips the staff from her back, turning it and plunging it into the witches heart. Black blood gushes out as the witch’s mouth falls open, a pained wheeze coming from her lips. “Cheat,” she chokes out, raising a crooked finger to point. Her eyes are as wide as saucers, her hands gripping the staff. Clarke twists it, forcing it deeper in until it comes out the other side.

A burning sensation travels up Clarke’s arm, making her knees buckle with the sheer force of it.

She hears yelling, distant and far away. It takes a second before she realises it’s  _ her,  _ yelling through the pain. She can feel blood trickling down her arms, and with a final burst of effort she wrenches the staff from out of the witch’s chest.

Clarke hears the body fall with a thump, and the  _ whoosh  _ of the barrier breaking.

\--

Bellamy watches with fury as the witch lifts Clarke in an invisible chokehold. The entire time they were fighting he was vaguely aware of the sobs that wracked his body, mind occupied with the need to  _ get to Clarke. _

The only reason his hands aren’t broken is probably Murphy, who pulled him away and only got bruises to thank him for it.

When he hears Clarke rasp out, “I yield,” a deafening silence fell over him. He sees Clarke eyes search for him, latching on when they meet. A fresh wave of tears trickle down his face, but he holds on to his anger, trying to stay strong.

The witch moves in a slow circle, and all Bellamy can hear is the dull pounding of his heart. All he can see is the steady rise and fall of Clarke’s chest, telling him that  _ she’s still alive. _

Then, Clarke’s hand snakes to her back, and Bellamy stops breathing.

The witch pulls her up, and Clarke plunges it into her heart.

She’s screaming. Blood is pouring down her arms, stemming from cuts that just never seem to stop appearing. Bellamy realises that they’re vines, inching their way up her arms. 

The witch dies and she’s  _ still screaming,  _ falling onto the ground, nails dragging over her skin.

There’s a  _ whoosh _ , and the barrier is gone. 

Bellamy runs faster than he ever has before, sliding in the dirt beside Clarke. He gently wraps his arms around her, mindful of her cuts, trying to soothe her with a litany of her name and pleads to stay alive.

Murphy arrives a second later, kneeling beside them. His hands hover in the air, unsure of what to do.

“Make it stop,” Clarke whispers, voice breaking. “Make the pain stop. It hurts.”

“I know, Clarke, I know,” Bellamy says, rocking her gently.

“What can I do?” Murphy asks, looking to Bellamy for help.

“Take it,” Clarke says, holding her hand out, “take the magic.”

Murphy’s brow furrows, confused, before he grips her hand in his. The moment his hand closes around hers, he gasps, the air rushing out of him as if he was punched in the stomach. He grits his teeth, but still groans in pain, breaths becoming rapid. His knuckles turn white with how hard he’s gripping Clarke’s hand. Bellamy would push him away if Clarke wasn’t breathing easier by the minute.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, Murphy lets go, breathing heavily. He turns to his side and vomits, Bellamy politely looking away.

“Murphy?” Bellamy says, not wanting him to die right now.

Murphy holds up a hand an inch away from his face. “Is my skin vibrating?”

Bellamy adjust Clarke so she’s sitting sideways in his lap. “I don’t think so.”

“Huh.”

Bellamy is covered in Clarke’s blood, but he doesn’t really care right now. Her lips are pale and she’s shaking, but at least she’s not screaming anymore.

Murphy turns back around, crawling back to Clarke. He lays a hand on her arm, closing his eyes. A second later a small green glow appears, running up Clarke’s cuts. They clot, the bleeding stopping.

“That’s all I can do,” Murphy says, exhaustion lacing his voice. He struggles to sit up, Bellamy watching with worry. He scoots to a nearby tree, leaning against it.

They sit and watch Clarke breathe steadily.

They’re all alive. They’re fine.

They’ll be okay.

\--

Bellamy is staring into the fire, unseeing, when Clarke wakes up.

She’s laying down on his and Murphy’s bedrolls which have been pushed side by side so she can comfortably rest. Clarke stirs, rubbing her eyes.

“Hey,” Bellamy says, low. He walks over to her, crouching by her side.

“Hi,” Clarke croaks. Bellamy gives her his waterskin and she drinks greedily, finishing the whole thing.

As she puts it down she catches sight of her arms. The scabs are an angry red, still healing.

“Do you know what it is?” Bellamy asks her, gently running his fingers over the marks.

“A warning, for breaking the deal. Next time I won’t be so lucky.” She gives him a small smile and Bellamy can feel himself relax.  _ She’s okay. _ He searches her eyes for a second, trying to find any sign of pain. When he sees there are none, he wraps her up in a tight hug, letting out a shuddering breath.

“You really had me worried there for a second,” he murmurs into her hair.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Bellamy says nothing as he holds her, reminding himself that she’s alive and well. He pulls away, resting his forehead against hers for a second. Clarke’s hand goes to his neck, playing with his hair. She leans forward, pressing a sure kiss to his lips. He reciprocates immediately, pulling her a bit closer.

They break apart, still staying close. A movement from the tree makes Clarke turn away. Murphy had taken to sitting against a trunk, dozing slightly as they waited for Clarke to rest. He blinks for a second, his eyes shifting into focus.

“You good?” Murphy asks.

“I’m good.”

Murphy nods, tension draining out of his shoulders. “If you’re good then can I have my bedroll back?”

A laugh startles out of Clarke while Bellamy just sighs, though a smile is playing at his lips. “You snooze, you lose,” Clarke retorts, laying back down and spreading out as much as she can, taking up as much space as possible.

Suddenly, she sits up sharply, then immediately regrets it if her groan is anything to go by.

Bellamy rubs her back comfortingly. “What is it?”

“The ingredients–we can find Octavia!” Clarke says, her face lit up with excitement.

“Shouldn’t you rest first?” Murphy says, dubious.

“You took my magic, didn’t you? You can do it and I can help.”

“I don’t think that’s a good–”

“Relax, it’ll be fine. And if it doesn’t go well, we have enough ingredients for a second try.”

Murphy still looks uncertain, head tilting to the side.

“The sooner you do it, the sooner you can leave,” Bellamy says.

Murphy scoffs. “I’ll do it, but you’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

Bellamy can’t help but smile at that. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

They get the ingredients ready, Clarke making sure that everything is in the right place. They take everything out and line them up in the order they got them; Octavia’s hair, the first sign of spring (the bud), a Hydra scale, a magic bean, the hair of a troll, evergreen moss, and finally, moonlight.

“Okay Murphy,” Clarke says, holding his hand, “all you have to do is hold my hand and focus your energy there. I can do the rest.”

“Why can’t I just do it myself again?” Murphy asks.

“‘Cause you only just got your magic. You can’t control it.” Murphy opens his mouth to ask another question but Clarke beats him to it. “ _ I _ can’t do it because I used a shit ton of my magic and then gave half of it to you. Right now I need your power and you need my control.”

Murphy shuts his mouth. “Got it.”

Bellamy is standing a couple metres away, watching avidly. He’ll finally have his sister again. He’ll finally be able to breathe easy. He feels a bit guilty at the fact that while she’s god knows where, he’s been with Clarke, happy and probably not as serious as he should be. He knows that if Octavia heard this, though, she’d lightly punch him in the shoulder and tell him to stop being such an idiot.

Soon she’ll get to actually do that.

Bellamy gets pulled back into reality when he hears Clarke chanting. The wind picks up around them, sending leaves scattering about. Clarke’s chanting gets louder and Murphy’s arms starts to glow blue.

The ingredients start to hover, moving in a slow circle. The steadily start to move closer, forming a sort of ball. They flash a bright white, making Bellamy close his eyes out of instinct. There’s another flash–Bellamy can’t tell what colour–then the chanting stops.

Slowly, Bellamy opens his eyes. Instead of the ball of ingredients, there’s a small stone. It’s a deep blue and shiny.

Clarke lets go of Murphy’s hand and plucks the stone from the air, stroking it with her thumb.

“Is that..?” Bellamy asks, his voice coming out as a whisper.

“Yeah. This is how we’ll find Octavia.”

\--

The stone is just a bit smaller than his palm, the shape of an oval. On the stone, there’s a small arrow, pointing to Octavia at all time. If he tries to turn the stone, the arrow just moves, like a compass tailored to Octavia.

They follow it back through the forest, the stone taking them to Arcadia. They hitch rides again, nearly getting caught until Clarke knocks a guard out. They stick to back alleys more strictly then, no one wanting to get slowed down by an arrest. They keep following the stone, going all the way to Gwydyr Forest.

“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” Bellamy breathes. He knows this cluster of trees. This fake boulder.

He double checks the arrow, making sure he’s not reading it wrong.  _ It can’t be. _

“Are we really back here?” Murphy says, irritation creeping into his voice.

“We really are,” Clarke sighs.

They step through the boulder, the familiar cold, prickling sensation surrounding them as they cross.

The stone keeps telling them to go forward until they reach the tower.

“In here,” Bellamy says, his heart racing.

Clarke and Murphy both call on their mage fire. Where Clarke’s was purple, Murphy’s fire was a deep cobalt blue. They exchange a nod before punching the stone wall, sending rock flying everywhere.

Bellamy covers his face just in time, his back getting hit instead. “You couldn’t have given me a little warning?”

“Oops,” Murphy says, smirking, “must’ve forgot.”

Bellamy glares and steps inside, taking Clarke’s hand and pulling her in with him. 

The inside held a dark room. A small dying garden lay forgotten in the corner. There was a well in the middle and a ladder going up. The darkness makes it seem like the ladder stretches up forever, disappearing into nothingness. 

Clarke sends a blast of light upwards, revealing that the ladder leads to a trapdoor which probably opens up into Clarke’s old room.

In his hand, the stone gently glowed.

“That means she’s here,” Clarke says, squeezing his hand.

Bellamy nods, taking a deep breath. “Octavia?” He yells, his voice echoing. “O?”

The trapdoor opens, a square of light peeking through.

“Bell?” He hears back, and Bellamy knows that voice. He’s had it memorised since the first day she cried.

_ Octavia. _

“O!” Bellamy calls again, voice becoming a bit choked up.

Octavia comes out of the trapdoor, grips the ladder, and slides down. In less than twenty seconds she’s running at him. Bellamy lets go of Clarke’s hand to catch Octavia, hugging her tight enough to crush her bones. She’ll live, though. She’s strong.

“I found you,” Bellamy says, pressing his face to her hair, “I finally found you.”

“Took you long enough,” she says back, thick with tears, “I was just about to jump out of the window.” Octavia sniffs, pulling back to get a look at him. 

_ She looks the same,  _ Bellamy thinks. Same braids in her hair, same clothes and swords strapped to her back. She has a bag that he presumes holds all their weapons. No new bruises, thank god. 

“We went all the way to fucking Savernake Thicket and you were here the entire time?” Murphy says, incredulous. “Seriously?”

“Why the fuck are you here?” Octavia asks, ears going red, probably because she nearly cried in front of  _ Murphy  _ of all people. She catches sight of Clarke. “And who are you?”

“I’m Clarke Griffin. I lived above you.”

“You what?” 

“It’s a long story,” Bellamy cuts in, sharing a glance with Clarke. “What did she do to you?” Bellamy asks, because she probably didn’t just waltz into the tower on her own accord.

Octavia raises an eyebrow at his sudden change of subject but thankfully lets it drop. “This weird person in a black cloak took me while I was doing laundry–which, by the way, is the least cool thing to be doing when you’re taken. She did something and then suddenly couldn’t move. Then, she just… carried me. All the way here. Something about being a back-up plan.”

“Oh, she probably wanted your body,” Clarke pipes up.

“She what?” Octavia says, confusion written all over her face. She turns to look at Bellamy like  _ what the fuck. _

“Wanted your body. Not for, like, sex or anything. Just to possess you. So she could live.”

A beat of silence. “That… makes a lot of sense actually. Who are you again?” Octavia asks, not unkindly.

“Clarke Griffin, nice to meet you,” Clarke greets, undeterred. She holds her hand out to shake which Octavia accepts after only a moment's hesitation.

“You still haven’t explained why Murphy’s here,” Octavia says, clearly waiting for an explanation.

“Like I said, it’s a long story–”

“Then give me the short version.”  _ God  _ Bellamy had nearly forgotten how stubborn she was.

He really missed her.

“Well,” Murphy says, “Bellamy came to me, begging–”

“I did not  _ beg–” _

“ _ Begging  _ for my help. In our quest to find you, we found Clarkey here. Then, we needed to do a location spell to find you which led us on a wild tale of adventure. We did the spell, and now we’re here.”

Octavia nods. She looks at Clarke, then Bellamy, then back to Clarke.

“Are you two boning?”

“I–what? We–we’re–” Bellamy sputters trying to find the right words. Clarke just turns red, laughing nervously.

“What? It’s a legitimate question,” Octavia smirks, unapologetic. Before Bellamy can respond, she turns to Clarke. “So. What can you do?”

Clarke’s arm lights up in mage fire, and Octavia grins, wide.

“Oh, I like you.”

Clarke smiles back, shaking off her fire and grabbing Bellamy’s hand. They all turn to the exit and Octavia practically jumps out, rolling on the grass and laughing.

She sits up, surveying the area. “How do we get out of here?” Octavia asks, not seeing an immediate exit from the clearing.

“Follow me,” Murphy says, running straight for the boulder. He disappears through it, Octavia following seconds after.

Bellamy and Clarke are a bit slower, walking leisurely hand in hand. Bellamy looks back at Clarke, noticing the slight furrow in her brow and the nervous way she bites her lip. He stops her, tilting her face to look at him.

“Hey,” Bellamy says, gentle, “what’s wrong?” He smooths out her brow, pushing her hair out of her face.

“Just… when I was fighting the witch… she said my mom didn’t actually trade me. I wasn’t  _ given  _ I was  _ taken.  _ She’s been looking for me, Bellamy, and I just…” Her words trail off and Clarke yells in frustration.

Bellamy nods, trying not to let the disappointment show on his face. She was gonna leave to go find her mom. Of course she was. She has a real family. “Listen, if you want to go find your mother, I understand.”

Clarke shakes her head. “That’s the thing, Bellamy. I don’t want to find her. I spent ten years just  _ hating  _ her and now… Now I don’t know  _ what  _ to do.”

The relief Bellamy feels makes him feel a little guilty, but he figures he can be a little selfish for once. 

“Well,” Bellamy says, drawing the word out to seem nonchalant, “you can always come with us. I mean we  _ are  _ wanted criminals but the law’s corrupt anyways.”

Clarke stares into his eyes, looking for something. She must find it because she surges up to kiss him, tugging him down to meet her. She deepens the kiss quickly, pulling slightly at Bellamy’s hair. He happily kisses her back, almost smiling too wide to be a proper kiss.

When they finally pull back, Clarke’s cheeks are flushed and her hair is mussed, blue eyes bright.

“Is that a yes then?” He says, arms wrapped around Clarke with no intention of letting go.

“Bellamy,” Clarke says, framing his face with her hands, “it’s a  _ hell  _ yes.”

Bellamy ducks down for another kiss, picking Clarke up and spinning her around, laughing. After a hell of a ride, Bellamy is probably the happiest he’s ever been. He’s definitely not letting this go.

Not for a long while.

**Author's Note:**

> SO YEAH. I HOPE YOU LIKED IT. I SPENT SEVEN MONTHS WRITING IT. VALIDATE ME PLEASE.
> 
> also follow me on tumblr? @blvke-bellamy


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